Robust, flexible and operational mine design strategies

Abstract

Strategic planning in mining is an important value accretive process. One of the most essentialaspects during the planning phase is determining the correct system design. A traditional minedesign process develops a fixed system for one set of conditions or expected values. Analternative is to develop a robust system that deals with variation, by handling a range ofconditions within the optimisation process. Conversely, a flexible design can be generated whichchanges the system dynamically over time in response to change. It is hypothesised that a flexibledesign generates more value than a robust design which in turn generates more value than atraditional design. However, due to constant change, a fully flexible design is not practical.Ideally, a hybrid of the two methods would be optimal. An operational design is proposed as amanual solution to this problem. This paper compares these different new design methodologies.