Minemax has released Minemax Scheduler 7.0.1 to, it says, help strategic mine planners model mineral processing more accurately.

“Mining companies have had an ongoing need to integrate strategic mine planning with other parts of the business to create realistic high-value mine plans,” the company says. “Recently, Minemax has introduced Minemax Scheduler 7 with Financial Constraints that brings mine planning and finance together into one single platform.”

Scheduler version 7.0.1 is taking another leap forward by addressing the gap between strategic mine planning and metallurgy, Minemax says.

In metal production, the throughput and metal recovery of a processing plant is dependent upon the blend of rock types and grades. Up until now, it has been difficult, if not impossible, to model this with strategic mine planning tools, Minemax says. With Minemax Scheduler 7.0.1, mine planners are now able to model this relationship more accurately, and therefore, develop more reliable strategic mine plans, according to the company.

In addition, Minemax Scheduler 7.0.1 features new Capex functionality that allows mine planners to easily model specific requirements for capital expenditure decisions.

“Firstly, mine planners can now easily determine the optimal time to start a new mining area, associated with capital expenditure such as ground works, infrastructure or road development,” the company said. “This is now modelled in software explicitly in the ‘capital expenditure’ menu without any tedious workaround required. With this framework, it’s just a matter of adding new capital expenditure options and selecting the pit or pits associated with the mining expansion.

“The same steps can be used for starting new dumps. Once the capex set up is done, Minemax Scheduler simultaneously optimises mine schedules with multiple capex decisions to find the optimal solution.”

Secondly, there is often a limit on the number of new trucks purchased per period due to delivery and installation restrictions. Minemax Scheduler 7.0.1 allows mine planners to specify the maximum number of capex instances per period. This is a new addition to the existing Capex functionality, restricting the total number of instances for the entire schedule, the company says.

All maintained and subscribed users can now download Minemax Scheduler 7.0.1 through the Minemax Software Manager and benefit from these new enhancements, the company says.