When reality in the pit departs from the original plans, some software solutions empower the control room to react quickly and still meet energy cost reduction goals
Mining is an industry “in which nothing is as you think it is,” according to University of Alberta Professor John Sammut, former mine engineering consultant and Komatsu area manager. “It is almost a horror story in a way.” Sammut said this gives context to what he sees as the top challenges faced by planners and the office folk tasked with making reality in the pit match the goals of the bosses. “You could be digging granite, but it could be completely different 50 meters (m) away from where you are,” he said. When planning and scheduling, “we rely upon a certain amount of homogeneity and a certain amount of assumptions that things are going to be like this and like this, and it is not like that in the real world.”
