A method for solving the open-pit mine production scheduling problem using the constraint programming paradigm

Abstract

A method is developed to solve the problem of open-pit mine production scheduling, which is based on Constraint Programming and is used in working out an optimal plan of mining operations, taking into account heterogeneous economical, technological and some others requirements imposed by the customer. An original model is proposed to represent the problem considered as a constraint satisfaction problem. As the customer may verify the requirements, the domain model should enable addition of the new constraints and/or eliminate the existing ones. With the domain model being developed, the method proposed makes it possible to reach accurate solutions at the expense of highly effective reduction algorithms for each type of constraints and at the expense of specialized heuristics for non-perspective alternatives reduction in a search tree. The approach proposed enables addition of different constraints, even those for which it is difficult to find an analytical expression.