Simulation of an underground cut and fill mine
A simulation approach using SimMine to determine the systems bottlenecks and the added value of additional miners in the production shift
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Abstract
The case study consist of a small underground mine with a small mining crew. The vehicle park is relatively large, and therefore it is necessary to establish the added value of additional miners or equipment for short-term production planning purposes, assuming that staff size currently limits production capacity to find out if staff size is indeed the bottleneck in the production capacity of the mine operation. When the bottlenecks of the mining system are known, it will be easier to focus on necessary areas and further implementations to improve the system.
The truck numbers used in the simulation study were ranging from 4 to 7, and the operator pool size was ranging from 10 to 15 people. Significant findings of this study are that with the current mine setup of 4 trucks, there would be no increase in production when adding operators. For the 24 scenarios the production increase was determined, the revenue change and the mining cost. By adding trucks and operators, a production increase of 19.38 % could be reached with 15 operator and 7 trucks.