Haulage Strategies

Maximizing productivity and minimizing cost is essential for any mining operation. Haulage and hoisting systems are typically capital investments, which have a large impact on every mine´s productivity, operating cost and competitiveness. It is essential to identify the optimal solution by thoroughly analyse the pros and cons of every alternative solution prior to making an investment decision.

By simulating the mine’s haulage system, a number of asset management issues can be investigated:

• Equipment operating characteristics, such as loading and dumping times, traveling speeds, capacities, treatment rate etc, and variations for different types of materials handled.
• Equipment maintenance parameters, including both planned maintenance and random breakdowns.
• Interference between vehicles, and the capacity and spacing of passing areas for trucks or trains etc.
• Existence and capacity of surge bins and stockpiles.
• Characteristics of rock to be handled, such as patterns of "availability" of different rock types, "digability", drawpoint hangup characteristics etc.