I was asked a question by a reader about what to do when you don’t have scheduling software with stochastic functionality. I will answer that question in the next article, but it got me thinking about why I have written so many articles about the need for stochastic scheduling and its benefits, but none yet about what to do when stochastic scheduling is not an option.

Including this article, it is nine articles in total now that I’ve written regarding stochastic scheduling. Why so many? When I sit back and think about it, some of it stems from the fact that I am amazed that stochastic scheduling functionality is not built into mine scheduling software as standard. That’s something that has to change!

So really, there have been two target audiences for those eight articles (well, nine now). The first target audience I’ll call miners, and the second audience is software suppliers. By miners, I mean mine planning engineers, senior scheduling engineers, planning superintendents, technical services and planning managers, general managers, and anyone who uses scheduling software or executes those schedules. I firmly believe that software suppliers are driven by the first group (miners), they provide what they perceive the market is looking for.

So, therefore, if we really want to drive change, customers (miners) need to ask for something different. That’s why miners are my primary target audience. It is you that needs to drive change, it is you that needs to say “deterministic scheduling is not good enough, it doesn’t match reality.”  The movement starts with you………

My second target audience for these articles are mine scheduling software providers. Following previous articles that I’ve written, I’ve heard from a number of people (particularly mining engineers) about stochastic scheduling they have carried out. But it typically has been more of a study exercise, rather than as part of their standardised scheduling practices that they routinely carry out. And when they talk about these studies, they have been simulation projects using Monte Carlo simulation, or some other form of simulation software. I haven’t heard yet from anyone who carries out mine scheduling using software that has built-in stochastic scheduling functionality. If it’s out there, please let me know, I would love to know about it and I will probably be one of its biggest fans.

So I’m hoping my second target audience has read my articles and thought “wow, that’s interesting, maybe we should think about doing that”. Or at the very least, they begin talking to their customers about stochastic scheduling and determining if there is some interest in the marketplace.

That’s why I’ve written so many articles covering stochastic scheduling, it’s one of the most important changes we need to make in mine scheduling. It would be great to see change begin, that move from deterministic scheduling to stochastic scheduling.