Material Categories
DTS allows the physical properties of a task (the spatial object related to the task) to be organized by material category.
In the following example a block in an open-pit mine contains material from three categories. The material in each category is scheduled to a different destination:
| Category | Tons | Fe | Destination |
| High Grade | 85 000 | 65.8 | Plant |
| Medium Grade | 25 000 | 60.1 | MG Stockpile |
| Waste | 50 000 | 35.3 | Waste Dump |
This can be accommodated in DTS in various ways:
Configure multiple production fields
The following production fields can be created to carry all the information on a single task:
| Field | Value |
| Tons | 160,000 |
| HG Tons | 85,000 |
| MG Tons | 25,000 |
| Waste Tons | 50,000 |
| HG Fe | 65.8 |
| MG Fe | 60.1 |
| Tons to Plant | 85,000 |
| Fe to Plant | 65.8 |
| Tons to MG Stock | 25,000 |
| Fe to MG Stock | 60.1 |
The disadvantage of this approach are:
- You cannot use the destination / stockpiling functionality in DTS.
- A large number of production fields must be created.
Using Sub-tasks
In this case the one task is represented by three tasks:
| Task | Tons | Fe | Destination |
| 120/HG | 85 000 | 65.8 | Plant |
| 120/MG | 25 000 | 60.1 | MG Stockpile |
| 120/Waste | 50 000 | 35.3 | Waste Dump |
The disadvantages of this approach are:
- A larger number of dependencies is needed to model constraints between blocks. Instead of one dependency between two blocks, you will need nine if each block has two categories.
- Resource levelling may not schedule all the sub-blocks together.
Material Categories
Using material categories the task can be scheduled as one unit, while still accommodating the material from each category being sent to different destinations.
