Introduction to MineSight

Activity Planner
( MSAP )
 What is MSAP ?
• A new mine scheduling tool recently developed by
Mintec, Inc.
• Useful in any planning scenario, but emphasis is on
short range planning.
• Uses an intuitive “Planning Board” approach to
schedule activities at the mine.
• Can schedule activities for any Mine Resource, e.g.
cut, stope, development, haul road, etc.
• Can assign Equipment Resources to these activities,
e.g. trucks, shovels, drills, crews, etc.
• Imports mining resources and equipment from MSIP,
as well as from general databases and spreadsheets.
 Planning Board - Introduction
• The Planning Board is a graphical representation of resource usage.
• We use the Planning Board to schedule activities for resources.
Planning Board - Shovels
 Planning Board - Details
• One can easily and rapidly move activities on the Planning Board,
change their duration (by shrinking or stretching them), and re-
assign them to other resources (by dragging them to another row).
• Our usual goal is always to keep the equipment resources busy
on consecutive activities, with minimal “down time” in between.
• One can also display attribute values for each resource
(tonnages, grades, equipment rates, costs, etc.) in tabular form.
• Attribute values can be aggregated for all activities and displayed
in chart form as a function of time, e.g.
• weighted average copper grade from all stopes being mined
• total operating cost of all active trucks
 Constraints View
• The Constraints View lets Planners assign precedence rules, e.g.
• Drill before Blast before Mine
• Mine Bench 2600 before Bench 2500
 Resources
• MSAP uses Mining Resources such as cuts, stopes, drifts, leach
pads, roads, stockpiles, etc.
• And Equipment Resources such as shovels, trucks, drills, etc.
• One can associate any attributes with any resource, e.g. cuts may
have attributes such as ore tons and copper grade; trucks may have
attributes such as hauling rate and operating cost.
• The Mine Planner may easily edit resource attributes on a
schedule, and the durations of all activities which use that resource
will be updated immediately
• E.g. if the loading rate or use intensity of a shovel is changed, then
the durations of all activities which use that shovel will immediately be
recalculated and updated on the Planning Board.
 Importing Resources
• We can import mining and equipment resources and their attributes
from MSIP as well as from many databases and spreadsheets.
Editing a Resource
Resource Properties
 Activities (1 of 2)
• An activity is any work or event that the Mine Planner wishes to model.
• Activities are organized by Activity Type, e.g. Drilling, Blasting, Mining and
so on; the Mine Planner may define whatever types he needs; charts and
reports are organized by Activity Type
• An activity can be very simple w/ fixed time and few if any resources
• e.g. “Move Shovel A”; time = 2 days; resource = Shovel A
• Or an activity may be much more complex, including multiple unit
operations and resources working “in parallel”.
• e.g. Mine Cut C17 w/ cut, shovel(s), truck(s), work crews and so on.

• The duration of an activity can be explicitly set by the user, or it can be

computed based on the known sizes and rates of the resources.
• A single activity may be split so that it stops then restarts, e.g. due to a
disturbance of some sort.
 Activities (2 of 2)
• Activities can easily be manipulated on the Planning Board, e.g. move,
delete, change duration, edit attributes, re-assign resources and so on.
• We can easily duplicate activities and then edit them in order to rapidly
create a large number of similar activities.
• If an activity needs to inserted into an existing schedule, we can identify
existing activities which may be impacted based on equipment usage and
constraints.
• We can highlight any errors which may be present in an activity, e.g. it
may violate a constraint with another activity.
• Activities often “consume” resources, e.g. a mining activity may consume
tonnage from a cut or stope. An error marker is displayed if one or more
activities collectively consume more resource than is available.
Add/Edit Activity – Schedule Tab
Add/Edit Activity – Resources Tab
 Dictionary
• Contains the “metadata” for the schedule
• Includes resource types, e.g. cut, drift, stope, ramp, truck, shovel, drill
• Includes resource attributes, e.g. tonnages, grades, lengths, costs
• Attaches a list of attributes to each resource type, e.g.
• cuts may have tonnage and grade attributes
• trucks may have Manufacturer, loading rate and cost attributes

• Activity types, such as Drilling or Mining; user can define which resource
types and which attributes apply to each activity type, e.g.
• Mining may include cuts, truck and shovel resources, cut tonnages and grades, truck hauling
rates and costs and shovel loading rates and costs
• Drilling may include cuts and drills with tonnages and drilling rates only
 Resource Attributes
• Planners may add any number of attributes to each resource type, e.g.
• Mine Cuts may include Ore Tons, Waste Tons, Various Grades, etc.
• Trucks may include Model, Operating Cost, Hauling Rate, etc.
 Displaying Resource Attributes
• Attribute values can be aggregated for all activities and displayed in
chart form underneath the Planning Board as a function of time, e.g..
• weighted average copper grade from all stopes being mined
• total operating cost of all active trucks
 Work Calendar
Mine Planners can specify working and non-working days
and hours using an intuitive calendar form.
During non-working times, designated activities are “paused”.
 Schedule Integrity (Rules)
• MSAP automatically alerts users to several potential scheduling errors, e.g.
• A resource has been assigned to too many concurrent activities. (Note: Where appropriate,
a resource can be shared between multiple activities.)
• A constraint has been violated, e.g. we scheduled a stope to be mined before the cross cut
has been developed.

• MSAP enforces these rules automatically, i.e. it will prevent you from
dragging or modifying an activity if it violates any user-specified rules.
• In some cases violations can occur through indirect means, e.g. the user
reduces the loading rate of a shovel, which extends the life of Activity A such
that it overlaps Activity B.
• Any activity which violates one or more rules can be identified on the
Planning Board by color coding.
• Users can right click on an activity to get a list of it’s errors.
Planning Board - Error View
 Reports
• Two reports are available to users to summarize the schedule:
• Resource Summary
• Activity Summary

• Reports are built using Crystal Reports

• Reports may be printed or exported to a variety of formats such
MS Word (.doc) and Adobe Acrobat (.pdf).
Activity Summary Report
Resource Summary Report
 Exporting to MS3D
• After scheduling cuts or stopes imported from MSIP, we
can export back the Start and End dates for each activity
type (drilling, blasting, mining, etc.)
• The cuts or stopes can then be color coded by one of
these dates, e.g. one could color code each cut or stope
according to the “End of Mining” date.
 Settings and Preferences
• Users can control a variety of settings that affect the appearance and
behavior of the schedule, such as the following:
• Default task duration, use intensity, time “snap” interval and so on
• Error checking specifications, e.g. should we check for resources which are assigned to
too many activities? Or violate constraints ?

• Color code the activities in several

different manners, e.g. color code
mining cuts according to the shovel
they use; color code by error type;
color code by activity type, etc.
• Select the attributes you want to
display on the Planning Board).
 MSAP Workshops

1. Open Pit – Lefteris Papanikolaou

2. Underground – Jim Lonergan