A Hard-Rock Mining Company Optimizes Schedules for Strategic Decision Making
Abstract
Our industry partner seeks an investment strategy and corresponding extraction schedule at daily fidelity of three-dimensional, notional blocks of ore (and waste) to maximize the discounted ounces of metal subject to spatial precedence, geotechnical, and operational constraints. This study develops an integer program, which we implement in Python, that enables fast parametric analysis, supports project-specific constraints, and generates (near-)optimal block schedules. Our model produces reliable and sustainable long-term scheduling solutions within five hours, which is faster than the time required for engineers to manually generate schedules and is acceptable for scenario analyses regarding changes in commodity price, crew productivity, plant sizing, and equipment availability.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Mining Techniques and Economics
Reservoir Engineering and Simulation Methods
Mining and Resource Management
Publication details
- Journal / source
- INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics
- Publisher
- Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 274–290
- Publication date
- 20 February 2026
- Language
- EN