Minemax believes the enhanced BZ-based scheduling engine of its open-pit mine planning software, Tempo 3.0.4, will find favour with its Minemax Software Manager (MSM) users, delivering high-value schedules quicker than before.

The new version of Tempo is now available to all maintained and subscribed users through MSM.

The Tempo 3.0 release in September 2017 marked the first time BZ-based scheduling (the Bienstock-Zuckerberg algorithm) was available in a commercial mine scheduling solution, according to Minemax.

Since that time, Minemax has extended the scope of Tempo’s BZ-based scheduling to include multiple alternative material destinations, trucking, both block and polygon scheduling and, most recently, products.

“New product and product attribute charts and tabular reports are now available in Tempo 3.0.4. Products, along with their associated attributes, constraints and reports, enable you to more completely model your mineral value chain,” the company said.

For example, in iron ore, products can be used for lump and fines, each with their own prices and blending constraints. In coal, products can be used to combine the outputs of both wash plant and by-pass processing options into multiple saleable blended products. With metals mining, products are used to satisfy monthly metal targets resulting from multiple processing options.

While Minemax believes BZ-based mine scheduling can deliver high-value schedules quickly, the company is also providing a MILP (mixed integer linear programming) “solver option as well for polygon-cut scheduling in Tempo” for those that are yet to be convinced.