Castro, JM & Larraín, M 2011, 'A tactical way to support the long-term mining plans production capacities', in Y Potvin (ed.), Strategic versus Tactical 2011: Proceedings of the Fourth International Seminar on Strategic versus Tactical Approaches in Mining, Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth, pp. 31-39, https://doi.org/10.36487/ACG_rep/1108_04_Castro
(https://papers.acg.uwa.edu.au/p/1108_04_Castro/)
Abstract: The common practice of the medium- and long-term mine planning is to set the production plans in terms of the maximal Net Present Value (NPV) as a target by the use of optimisation software packages. These computational tools use simplistic representations of the whole productive system as a flow network expressed on a yearly basis. As such, these tools require of technical parameters related to production capacity and flexibilities of the different processes, for example, energy consumption considerations of the crushing and milling processes, and the use of availability and utilisation factors as a maintenance programme effects estimation. Therefore, when relatively short stockpiles exist between mine haulage, crushing and milling processes with respect to the whole system capacity, the mine and metallurgical planning requires to be supported by a more detailed and systemic analysis of these processes.

This paper reports on the tactical way El Teniente Mine estimates its strategic bottleneck process capacity. This approach integrates the Teniente 8 rail haulage system and Colón processing plant production plans with the critical equipments maintenance programme and existing stockpiles effect into the whole system production capacity.