The planning engineer at your mine site is about to start a new plan. There is variation from site to site and also some differences between short term and long term plans.  But generically, these are some of the steps that they’ll usually go through in order to prepare for scheduling:

1. Validating the latest geological model has been used.
2. Uploading any new designs.
3. Adding new block reserves if required.
4. A general check over the existing reserves.
5. Checking historical productivities and where required updating values used in the schedule.
6. Checking the time usage model and calendar and updating where required.
7. Updating face positions used in the schedule.
8. And reviewing the previous plan for anything that may have gone wrong that requires fixing this time.

This is not a comprehensive list, every mine site is different and so there will be other steps.  But here’s the crux of the issue, if you examine the items on the list above, you’ll notice that nothing on the list relates to improving the planning process itself.  We concentrate on producing better plans, but we don’t necessarily focus on improving the mine planning process.  That’s what I would define as continuous improvement: improving the planning process, which in the long run will lead to improved mine plans.

I feel that engineers are typically always looking for new improvement possibilities, we’re always on the lookout for better options.  I think part of the issue is that planners are required to produce so many mine plans on such a regular basis, that they become “stuck in the mud” and find it difficult to extract themselves sufficiently from day to day operations to find time to focus on the bigger picture.

We’ve had a tremendous rate of change over the last two decades, our hardware and software capabilities have improved at an astounding rate over the last two decades.  This leads to the question “has mine planning improved at the same rate as our IT capabilities have?”

It would be fantastic if we had mine planning KPIs in place for the previous twenty years so that we could measure performance and understand if our mine planning has improved over time.  Unfortunately, though we don’t have this luxury, so I’ve used a LinkedIn survey to collect opinions from the industry.  In trying to determine public opinion on whether mine planning has improved, firstly I had to define what “improved” looks like.  A good mine plan, in my opinion, is one that fairly accurately depicts reality; therefore, it’s feasible to follow the plan and achieve targets.  Given that context, I asked the question “Do you think mine planning has improved in the last ten years?”  A total of 536 people completed the survey and there were three possible responses, those responses and the results of the survey were as follows:

1. It is better now (273 responses = 51%)
2. About the same (176 responses = 33%)
3. Worse now (87 responses = 16%)

Personally, I think mine planning is about the same.  Our data is undoubtedly more accurate than it’s ever been.  Our software has certainly improved in terms of its capabilities.  As a result, our plans are carried out at a much greater level of detail and complexity, because of our increased capacity.

But I don’t believe we are creating plans that can be followed any better.  In mine planning we are attempting to predict the future, I don’t believe our plans are any better in this sense.  I don’t believe that in general, we have improved the coordination between mine planning and production personnel.  And if we take the approach that the Production team are our customers, I don’t believe that we are providing our customers with a better product to implement.

Computing speed and capabilities have improved by a factor of three over the last 20 years.  Have we kept pace with technology and are our mine plans three times better than they used to be?  Well, 49% of the survey respondents thought we were either stationary or going backward and I agree with them.  So, how has our mine planning evolved?  Is it now three times better than it was 20 years ago in your opinion?  As far as I’m concerned mine planning is a long way short of where it should be, which supports my belief that we have missed the continuous improvement boat.

Maybe it’s not so much a mine planning problem that we have, but it is a continuous improvement problem instead??