In recent years, fierce competition, rising production costs
and depressed prices for mineral products, have forced
mining companies to find ways to improve efficiency and
lower production costs. Given the fact that loading and
hauling operations account for up to 60 % of the total costs
in surface mining, the optimization and control of these
operations can provide substantial reductions in the costs.
Assignment of truck to shovels has been traditionally
performed by fixed truck allocation and by truck
dispatching. Several operations research and simulation
techniques, which can be used to solve problems concerning
surface mining operations, are discussed. The types of
problems addressed are: how to allocate trucks to loading
equipment, how to evaluate the performance of an existing
operation, and how to predict the performance of a future
system.
For truck allocation, operations research methods such as:
dynamic programming, integer programming, and heuristic
algorithms are discussed. These methods are used mainly for
decision making purposes. Queuing theory techniques, also
analyzed, are used mainly for evaluation purposes.
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