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TS. Guidance

TS. Guidance

Owned by iarmstrong
Last updated: Jan 02, 2024 by Todd Eggerman
5 min read

RU

This feature allows users to provide a strategic guidance to the scheduling sequence.

By providing a set of end-of-period surfaces and target periods for these surfaces, the user can define which blocks should have priority for scheduling consideration.

Guidance Setup Step

Overview

  • Allows users to specify which blocks should be mined by which period.

  • Maps end-of-period surfaces against blocks, assigning periods to blocks that are above an end-of-period surface.

  • Configure how strongly the schedule should adhere to these in the Schedule > Calendar tab > Guidance rows.

Enabling Guidance

This feature is optional and must be enabled or disabled by the flag in the Configuration options setup step.

When enabled, new setup step Guidance will appear in the Setup Task list.

Note that this option is disabled by default.

Configuring Guidance Sets

Guidance Sets are collections of EOP surfaces. These are largely for organisational purposes only - all EOP surfaces are combined into a single collection when target periods are being assigned to blocks.

Adding Guidance Sets

Guidance sets can be created in several ways:

New Guidance Set

Create a new, empty Guidance Set

  • To be filled with EOP surfaces from either Layers or from imported non-solid surfaces.

Import from Micromine Beyond

Import directly from a Micromine Beyond “.tridb” file

  • Imports EOP surfaces and assigns periods to these surfaces.

Import from ATS End of Period Export

Import directly from an ATS “*.guidesnaps” file

  • Imports EOP surfaces and assigns periods to these surfaces.

Errors

Make sure your Guidance Sets names are not duplicated neither empty, otherwise you’ll get an error message preventing you from proceeding through the setup:

“Some guidance sets contain duplicate names, including <(New Guidance Set 1)>”.

“Some guidance sets contain empty names”.

 

 

EOP Surfaces

EOP (End of Period) surfaces are surfaces which represent the expected or planned state of the pit by the end of a certain date.

Each EOP surface can have a Period assigned to them, which indicates that all blocks above this surface must be mined by the end of the assigned period.

When multiple guidance sets are present, these are all condensed into a single large set for the purposes of calculation. Each block is assigned the earliest period from all guidance sets present.

Period Selection

Left-click on the row in the Period column. A drop-down list of period selections will open. Scroll up to select a period Before Plan, or down to select a period that is not part of the planning horizon considered in the model.

Multi selection

To assign one period to several surfaces, select them from the list using <CTRL> and <SHIFT> keys and select a period for the whole group in the lower panel. When assigning a single period to a selected group, the upper field will show “(multiple values)”.

Records panel and Viewport

In the Records panel, select the levels/records or Record Subsets you want to display in the Viewport.

Navigating through the viewport and the tree structure of the records is the same as in other steps. For more information, see UI. Tree Structure and Viewport.

Layers panel

The Layers panel is used to import and display any relevant surfaces and solids. For more information, see in the section UI. Layers/Overlays panel.

Data panel

Data panel is used to review mining properties of the selected records. For more information, see in the section UI. Data panel.

To hide any one or several of these panels, use the pin icon provided in the upper right corner of each panel.

Note that you don’t see any updated guidance-based data in this setup step. The software calculates what period each reserve block should be mined by only when moving to the next setup item.

Calendar Inputs

Calendar inputs allow users to control how much influence end of period surfaces have on the schedule.

Guidance

To configure and review guidance impact on the schedule outcome, navigate to the Schedule > Calendar tab > Guidance rows. See the explanation below.

Period Matching Incentive

Schedule will focus on matching each individual period. Higher values will mean that blocks assigned a period to be mined will be given a higher priority, provided that the targeted period has not already been reached.

Period Match Lookahead

How many future periods impact the schedule. Blocks with assigned periods later than this many periods relative to the current period will be ignored. The closer the current period is to the block’s targeted period, the higher the incentive applied against the block.

Note, that default input “1” means it will match to the Current Period, no Lookahead. Input “2” would mean it will look ahead one month, etc. You can't enter “0” as Period Match Lookahead.

Delayed Block Incentive

Schedule will increase the incentive on blocks that are behind plan. The more periods have passed between the block’s target period and the current period, the stronger the incentive.

Agents

Navigate to the Agents section to set the Strategic Guidance Weight for each Agent.

Strategic Guidance Weight

How strongly each agent will follow the guidance.

 

Scenarios

To compare different inputs outcomes in the same project, you can create several Scenarios, for example, with different incentives and weights. For more information, see the section TS. Schedule tab > Scenarios panel.

 

Animation

In the Animation tab, review how the scheduled mining is following the strategic guidances.

 

Reserves Shading

Default <Strategic Guidance> shading allows users to see what period is assigned as the target period of each block.

 

 

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