Transport Routes
After the business areas, locations and stockpiles have been created in the Supply Chain Explorer, it is necessary to create material flows and transport routes to model the movement of materials from the mine pits to the port.
MineMarket models despatches along transport routes as moving stockpiles.
Transport Route Configuration
Transport routes represent the movement of bulk material or discrete units by using trucks, trains, barges or shipping vessels. Predefined routes are not essential for shipping, railing, trucking or barging because the route can be set up for each despatch. However, predefined routes can be used as a template. Routes can be configured with one or more route points and may include route markers.
Routes can be limited to specific allowed products if required.
Route Points
Route points are locations along a transport route where loading or unloading of material takes place; for example, a rail siding or truck location. For each despatch, you can record loading and unloading, itinerary dates and times, transport events or delays, samples, surveys and other activities that occur at each route point.
Route Markers
Route markers can be used for locations that do not have loading or unloading activities, but for which itinerary dates and times, transport events or delays must be recorded; for example, border locations.
Duration and Travel Time
You can specify a duration for each route point, and travel time between route points and route markers.
The duration time estimates and travel time estimates are used when calculating estimated times of arrival and departure on the Route Plan tab of a despatch.
If dates are entered without time (see Set Date and Time Formats), calculated dates on the Route Plan tab will only be affected if the duration and travel times in the route configuration are more than 24 hours.
Generic Transport Locations and Routes
A planned loading location and planned unloading location can be specified for despatch orders. If the despatch order is associated with a despatch, information from the despatch is used in invoice calculations for the despatch order. For example, the quantity of material that was loaded supersedes the despatch order's required quantity, and quality data from samples on the despatch supersede the despatch order specifications. By default, the loading location and unloading location in the despatch route also supersede the planned loading location and planned unloading location (only if there are transactions at those route points). These locations may impact invoice calculations, by determining applicable demurrage and despatch conditions, service and freight calculations, parities and contract charges.
Generic transport locations can be set up in MineMarket to represent origin and destination locations for transported goods without specifying real geographic locations connected by a real physical route. For MineMarket implementations with many locations, it may not be practical to set up a route for every possible combination of origin and destination, with bulk material process flows or discrete unit movement flows to support those routes. A simpler configuration is to set up a generic loading location and unloading location for each required transport type, with a generic route between them. The generic route will not have useful travel times between the route points; however, itinerary dates and times may be entered for each despatch or imported from other systems.
If using generic routes, it is essential to configure despatch orders to assume generic loading and unloading locations. See Enter Default Locations for a Sales or Purchase Contract and Edit Despatch Order Details. The locations entered on the despatch order can then be used for invoice calculations, instead of the despatch route points.
Process Flow Diagrams
A process flow diagram illustrates the locations in a business area and the material flows and transport routes between the locations.
See Material Flows.
