Material Allocation Optimizer (MAO) Managing the distribution of large volume, low value commodities

What is Material Allocation Optimizer?

For industrial minerals type deposits such as limestone, clays and also iron ore deposits there is often a requirement to deliver multiple products where a product is produced by blending several rock types in order to meet a set of specific quality targets for a number of different elements. Also, it is common to have available multiple possible processing methods with which to produce the required products.

Studio NPVS’s Material Allocation Optimizer (MAO) uses a linear programming implementation to offer a complete solution for this type of optimal allocation problem, allowing the engineer to determine how to best transport, stockpile and treat material to generate all required products. The main features of MAO are:

• Inputs to MAO can be mine production, stockpiles, or externally sourced material for blending
• Destinations determined by MAO can be processing methods and / or stockpiles which also serve as inputs for the next period.
• Destinations can have any number of quality targets expressed as rates or ratios of elements.
• Capacities of destinations can be unlimited (leach pads or waste dumps), limited (stockpiles) or specifically targeted (processing plants).
• Global constraints can be set over several rock types, for example to ensure a processing plant has a fixed ratio of rock types as its input.
• Destinations can have positive or negative costs. A negative cost is equivalent to a selling price thus allowing any number of complex products that vary over time to be specified.

MAO does not change the sequence of mining, it changes the destination of where material is sent, when it is mined, and it determines a stockpiling strategy to meet different product delivery requirements. MAO outputs for each block its optimal destination along with information inherited from the Scheduler’s OES. MAO is a powerful tool for evaluating whether the mine plan can deliver variable products and can also be used to test the mine plan’s resilience to changing sales contracts over the life of the mine.

	Related Topics
	MAO essentialsMAO Quick Start