Mine plan compliance – How do you know to mine the right grade and tons at the right time?
By Glen Kuntz, Manager Mining Dynamics, Runge Ltd
Profitability in mining is all about understanding the ore body and how to mine it to its maximum value. The ore body is a mining operations key asset and if the initial design, planning, and excavating ore is poor, the ability for the mining operation to capture and increase its revenue stream over time becomes reduced. Effective mine design, planning, and understanding the highest net present value associated with the extraction of the ore and removal of waste material is therefore paramount. As a mine develops over a period of time, so does its shape and future profit stream.
Compliance is a necessary part of managing and operating a mine. Whether it be an internal compliance (mine plan) or a regulatory compliance (JORC/Ni43-101/SOX), having the processes and technology to meet these in a timely manner is critical. Mine plan compliance is the process of measuring the precision between estimating and operating procedures on a regular basis (> 5 years, annual, monthly, quarterly, etc). The purpose is to be able to quantify how well a mine is achieving the planned production in a manner that conforms to companies’ business process, corporate compliance standards and guidelines.
Without a timely and accurate analysis of a mine plan, mine operators responsible for compliance are not able to appropriately adjust the mine plan to cope with the changing operating conditions, which will ultimately result in digression from the plan and poor compliance.
A large number of Runge’s mining customers are focused on improving mine compliance to improve asset cost curve position and increase production as well as to maximising cash generation and reducing OPEX costs. Unplanned work is 1.5 to 5 times more costly than planned so OPEX costs focuses on understanding the difference. Mining organisations are also interested in mine compliance to improve operating discipline and eliminate non value adding activity, and bringing accuracy to mine forecasting and reconciliation by understanding root causes between planned vs. actual work.
In both long and short-term mine planning process, the mine scheduling, forecasting, monitoring and reporting activities are the four main activities that determine the success of the schedule. It is only when mining organisations can forecast with some degree of certainty, consistency, reliability and compliance that they will be able to achieve the schedules that have been established.
Image: Example of Plan Compliance workflow