Stochastic short-term mine production schedule accounting for fleet allocation, operational considerations and blending restrictions

•New stochastic simultaneous optimization of extraction sequence and mining equipment.•SIP integrates uncertainties in metal/grade & fleet availability, hauling time etc.•Approach leads to lower cost and minable patterns.•Method leads to efficient fleet allocation, higher & less variable utilization.

A new short-term mine production scheduling formulation is developed herein based on stochastic integer programming. Unlike past approaches, the formulation simultaneously optimizes fleet and mining considerations, production extraction sequence and production constraints, while accounting for uncertainty in both orebody metal quantity and quality along with fleet parameters and equipment availability, all leading to a well-informed sequence of mining that is expected to have realistic as well as high performance during a mine's operation. To assess the latter performance and implementation intricacies of the proposed formulation, the formulation is applied at a multi-element iron mine and the resulting monthly schedules are assessed and compared to the conventional mine scheduling approach showing: lower cost, minable patterns, efficient fleet allocation ensuring higher and less variable utilization of the fleet.