Multi-objective short-term production scheduling for open-pit mines: a hierarchical decomposition-based algorithm

Michelle Blom, Adrian R. Pearce, Peter J. Stuckey

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This article presents a novel algorithm for solving a short-term open-pit production-scheduling problem in which several objectives, of varying priority, characterize the quality of each solution. A popular approach employs receding horizon control, dividing the horizon into N period-aggregates of increasing size (number of periods or span). An N-period mixed integer program (MIP) is solved for each period in the original horizon to incrementally construct a production schedule one period at a time. This article presents a new algorithm that, in contrast, decomposes the horizon into N period-aggregates of equal size. Given a schedule for these N periods, obtained by solving an N-period MIP, the first of these aggregates is itself decomposed into an N-period scheduling problem with guidance provided on what regions of the mine should be extracted. The performance of this hierarchical decomposition-based approach is compared with that of receding horizon control on a suite of data sets generated from an operating mine producing millions of tons of ore annually. As the number of objectives being optimized increases, the hierarchical decomposition-based algorithm outperforms receding horizon control, in a majority of instances.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2143-2160
Number of pages18
JournalEngineering Optimization
Volume50
Issue number12
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 12 Feb 2018
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • hierarchical decomposition
  • mixed-integer programming
  • Short-term open-pit production scheduling

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