TS. Stockpiles
- iarmstrong
Overview
Stockpiles are points in space that keep an inventory of the reserves dumped to and reclaimed from their location. Each material remains discrete and does not mix with the others in the stockpile.
Adding Stockpiles
Stockpiles must be represented by a node in Haul Infinity.
In ATS, stockpiles can be added using plus icon in the toolbar, or imported directly from Haul Infinity.
Option | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
Adding Stockpiles manually | To add and remove stockpiles manually use the green plus and red minus buttons located in the top toolbar. The names in the Stockpile Name column must follow this convention:
| |
Adding Stockpiles from Haul Infinity | You can add all or missing stockpiles from Haul Infinity. For this, use the Add Missing Items button located in the top toolbar. Note, that this tool will only find items with a name that begins with “Stockpiles/”. |
Capacity Field
The schedule calendar contains a capacity row for each stockpile. The capacity field is the unit of measurement of stockpile size, such as volume or tonnes.
Parcel Fingers
In the Parcel Fingers column choose how material types are binned in the stockpile.
Default <All Parcels>
With the default <All Parcels> selected, each material type is binned separately within the stockpile. For example, payloads of High Grade are all merged in the High-Grade pile, and payloads of Low Grade are all combined in the Low-Grade pile. When reclaiming from a parcel in the stockpile, the grades will be the weighted average of the total binned tonnes of that parcel.
Other Parcel Fingers
If scheduling in Optimise Products mode, the Optimiser can selectively reclaim parcel bins within a stockpile. For example, in a period where you are targeting higher grade material, the Optimiser may target the HG piles and leave the LG material behind. In reality, parcels sent to a stockpile will be blended into a homogenous pile, making it difficult to target and reclaim a specific parcel type. For more precise modelling (as may be required in short term plans), a Mutex Subset can be used.
Step 1. Creating a new parcel to represent the blend of Stockpile material
Parcels can only be merged into another (already) existing parcel. Generating a new parcel to represent the blended stockpile material is recommended. To do this, tick the Specify Known Parcels option must be enabled in the Configuration Options step.
In the Known Mining Parcels step, specify the parcel to represent the stockpile material.
Step 2. Creating Mutex Parcel group
Generate a new Mutex Parcel Group to be used in conjunction with the stockpiles by going to the Reserves tab > Data panel. When there press the gear icon to open Configure Parcel Subsets wizard.
Create a new Mutex Group (example, “StockpileBlend”) and assign the relevant parcels to the created Known Mining Parcel.
Note that assigned Subset Names must match your existing and Known Mining Parcel names.
The "Unassigned" value in Subset Name column for each parcel needs to be paired to a "Known Parcel". For parcels which will be part of the Stockpile blend, this "Known Parcel" will be the one created in the previous step. Parcels which are not part of the Stockpile blend can simply be mapped to there own parcel name.
Step 3. Selecting Mutex Group as Parcel Finger
Select the created mutex group from the dropdown list in the Parcel Fingers column.
Important Note
Finger Pile Types
In the Finger Pile Types column, choose whether to build and reclaim stockpiles in discrete fingers.
The types of stockpiling depend on the mode in which planning is performed (constraining trucks or optimising by product). See the txplanation in the table below.
Project Mode | Constrain on Trucks | Optimise Products |
|---|---|---|
Finger Pile Type | Projects in Constrain on Trucks mode may choose to load First In First Out (FIFO) or Last In First Out (LIFO) logic. In Tactical Scheduler, FIFO and LIFO refer to the reclaim sequence of the piles within the stockpile fingers. | Otherwise, you’ll get an error message preventing you from proceeding further through the setup without a correction.
To fix, either select “WeightAveraged” finger pile type, or change the project mode to the “Constrain on trucks”, if required to use FIFO or LIFO stockpiling logic. |
Example |
|
Finger Pile Size
In the Finger Pile Size column, enter sizes of each pile, following the instructions below.
Description | Example |
|---|---|
| |
The example on the right shows a setup for a stockpile which has fingers for all parcels. Each parcel finger is comprised of piles with a capacity equivalent to the value defined under the Finger Pile Size column. Pile number 3 in both the MG finger and the HG2 finger has not yet reached the 20,000t threshold, and therefore can't be reclaimed. If "LIFO" was selected in the Finger Pile Type column, this would cause there to be no reclaiming of HG2 or MG material. | |
The same logic applies if a Mutex Subset is chosen as the Parcel Finger Type. In the example, there is one finger comprising of material type “SP BLEND”. Within that finger, there are multiple piles, each having a capacity equivalent to the value defined under the Finger Pile Size column. If a pile has not met the threshold, it cannot be reclaimed. | |
Through FIFO and LIFO, it is possible to force a stockpile which comprises of a single material type to be fully built before it can be reclaimed. This can be achieved by setting the Finger Pile Size to the capacity of the stockpile. |
Finish Pile at Period End
Enabling the Finish Pile at Period End option allows piles which have not been fully built, to be reclaimed during the next period.
Explanation | Example |
|---|---|
If we consider that setup of ROM_2 which has the Finish Pile at Period End option enabled, it can be observed that material is reclaimed off the stockpile before a 40,000t pile has been constructed. When using this option, the quantity reclaimed cannot exceed the closing balance of the previous period. This is why in period 3, only 3,631 tonnes of material is fed to the crusher despite there being 18,605 tonnes at the end of the period. |
Manual Reclaim
Enable the Manual Reclaim flag, if you want to manually reclaim the stockpile selected.
Flagging Manual Reclaim for some stockpiles adds “Reclaim Target” line in the Calendar.
Optimisation Error
If you flag a stockpile to be Manually Reclaimed in the Stockpiles step, and then assign it a Reclaim Target in the Calendar, you may get an Optimisation error.
“A 'Manual Reclaim' stockpile is a source in a destination rule that has a crusher feed destination assignment. This is not allowed.“
To fix, review whether it’s required to manually reclaim the specified stockpile, as well as its Destination rule, and Reclaim Target in the Calendar (leave Reclaim Target set to “0”).
Stockpiles Mutex Subsets
In the Stockpiles Mutex Subsets panel, assign your stockpiles into different groups to make reporting simpler.
Created in this panel mutex groups can be referenced further in the scheduling, when a filter in the Chrono report.
Example | Some projects can have multiple ROM stockpiles. You may need to report total tonnes on "ROM" or “LT” for example. |
|---|---|
Setting | Create Mutex Subset to be used for reporting and assign Subset Name for each of the stockpiles. |
Usage in Reporting | Now in the Schedule > Reporting tab you can filter by this mutex subset. MutexStockpile.Reporting = "ROM", which had been set to include all ROM stockpiles. |
Error message
If names of parcels in the created Mutex Subset don’t match with the names of known mining parcels, you’ll get an error message, preventing you from proceeding further in the setup.
“One of the stockpiles uses mutex parcel subset <(StockpileBlend)>, which cannot be used because the following parcels are not mapped to parcel names which already exist in the model: <SP_blend-Blend, w-Waste, bg-Blend, lg-Blend, minw-Waste, hghs-Blend, hgha-Blend, hg-Blend>”.
Reason | Remedy |
|---|---|
Names of Subset parcels are not mapped correctly and don’t match names of existing parcels | Review parcels naming and mapping in the Known Mining Parcels setup step and Reserves tab > Data panel > Mutex Parcel Groups. Mapped names must fully match names specified in the Known Mining Parcels. Mismatching names, example “Blend” instead of “SP_Blend”, will result in an error, since “Blend” doesn’t exist as a parcel name to map other parcels into. |
Despite the fact that all parcels in the imported data are detected automatically, you can specify all existing in your project parcels in the Known Mining Parcels step. It will help to avoid remapping parcels each time after updating reserves naming. If you are working with unembedded Rapid Reserver and have numerous parcels, to make sure that existing parcels names are correct, you can export Mining Database to CSV and remove duplicates for the Parcel column. It will leave you with a list of existing parcels to copy and paste in Known Mining Parcels step. |