Scheduling trucks is a “mission-critical” process for surface mining companies, with substantial economic impact. Done well, it aligns the sequence of truck movements with organizational goals, maximizes the efficient use of a fleet of costly resources, and improves responsiveness to operational or business changes. Done poorly, the consequences can be serious: missed targets, lost production, equipment idled or in the wrong place, missed emissions targets, and increased costs are among the possible outcomes.

Several scheduling software tools (some dating back to the 1990s), that appear to be suitable for scheduling trucks are on the market. Some companies even use spreadsheets. But using software that is too simplistic can have very negative impact, and limit capability, because it may not  adequately address the critical needs of complex surface mine environments. As well, schedulers are put under additional pressure because these tools rely heavily on manual input, and intense scrutiny from management occurs when there is an operational disruption.

What are the critical needs for truly effective scheduling in surface mining? They include:

• The ability to deal with a complex operational environment, with multiple different types of activities and equipment that have to be used efficiently, on time and according to budgets;
• Rapid and effective responses to the changes and disruptions that occur every day;
• Optimization capabilities that align schedules with business goals, using any desired set of objectives;
• Reporting on key metrics about the schedule (such as tonnage and grade of material moved, costs, emissions, and insight into the impact of scheduling decisions—in terms of likely outcome—on those metrics;
• Being able to represent a wide variety of operational and business constraints (such as resource assignment or maintenance restrictions, location/proximity issues, emissions limits, and financial targets for specific periods);
• Rapid and accurate creation/evaluation of schedule scenarios that allow alternative sequences of activities to be analyzed at any given time;
• A high degree of automation so that precedences and timing requirements are handled automatically.

Actenum DSO/Mine automates and optimizes truck schedules

Since 2006, Actenum has worked with a variety of companies to improve operations scheduling. We’ve seen a common set of needs emerge for a scheduling tool to be truly effective:

1. Automation to free the user from repetitive, time-consuming tasks that may be performed by the computer. Users should be able to work rapidly with automatic assistance, while eliminating errors.
2. The software tool must be easy to use. The scheduling model available in the tool should represent the operations world, and reflect the workflow and business processes in the user’s organization.
3. The scheduling tool should provide a flexible and configurable modeling environment so that it may be easily and rapidly adapted for different organizations. Rather than imposing an “ideal world view” on a company, the software should be adaptable to suit specific needs, with all required milestones, activity types, resource types, and scheduling logic accurately represented.
4. The scheduling tool should incorporate an optimization capability so that the sequence of activities and their assigned resources may be rapidly aligned with business goals.
5. There should be immediate feedback on the consequences of changing the scheduling in any way. For example, changing a resource assignment should provide insight into the cost and production output changes that result.
6. Changing the schedule, to resolve an operational disruption or to alter the timing or resource assignment for a specific activity, should be easy and straightforward.
7. The software tool should enable schedule scenarios to be created and evaluated without impacting the production schedule.
8. Comprehensive reporting, in tabular or graphical form, must be available and viewable by all stakeholders.
9. The software tool should be easily integrated with external applications to provide for easy data import and export without the need for manual intervention, and to ensure that it contains a catalog of all relevant schedule information.

Actenum Corporation’s DSO/Mine software meets the challenges of scheduling complex truck movements, and addresses all of the needs listed above. It couples robust and reliable optimization technology to the scheduling process, picks up where simpler products run out of steam, and provides much more effective scheduling than traditional solutions and approaches. DSO/Mine incorporates a configurable and flexible operations model that may be adapted to a wide variety of scheduling situations, and that enables specific organizational constraints and requirements to be taken into account in the scheduling process. More importantly:

1. It’s fast! It automatically generates practical, robust schedules very quickly (in seconds or minutes). And, the user controls how much time to allocate to the process.
2. It’s highly interactive: DSO/Mine’s user interface has powerful visual capabilities for understanding all aspects of operations (a “360 degree view), how constraints affect the sequence of activities, and how rescheduling is best done when disruptions occur or new requirements appear.
3. It’s easy to integrate: the software was designed with a flexible and open architecture to allow easy integration with other applications, such as planning tools and ERP applications.

DSO/Mine moves operations scheduling to an enhanced level of capability. Instead of a process where important decisions are made about how to manage a truck schedule with little concrete insight into outcomes, DSO/Mine users benefit from a much more agile schedule process that provides reliable input into decision-making at all levels of the organization. By ensuring that operations are always aligned with business objectives, DSO/Mine software provides substantial economic benefits, maximizes asset ROI, and reduces risk.

Find out more!

For more information on DSO/Mine, watch this short video demonstration. Or contact us directly to learn how DSO/Mine can improve your truck scheduling:

• 604.245.8266
• info@actenum.com

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