The open pit gold mining operation by Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines Pty Ltd (KCGM) is the largest in Australia. The final pit will result in combining a few existing pits and underground operations. That is why the current operation is also known as the Super Pit. The scale of the operation demands efficient planning and the company has a very strong strategic planning department to support the mine planning and design activities. The author was supported by the KCGM in undertaking a study of the production system for the open pit mine operation and to develop a computer simulation of the existing system. A graduate student started working on this project as his Master's Thesis (Sappington, 1997) under the supervision of the author. This paper presents the initial study, formulation, and coding of the simulation and animation model developed for the above-mentioned operation. The model developed was also validated against existing performance measures and produced satisfactory results. Advantage of having such a model are emphasised and its role in strategic planning are addressed. The model developed was used later to test a few dispatch algorithm and for proposing a dispatch algorithm. However, the detailed sensitivity analysis and discussion of the dispatch algorithm are beyond the current scope of this paper.