(4) Inventory Management – This is what it’s all about!

Now to the crux of the matter, scheduling is primarily an inventory management process. While every mine is different and they all have their idiosyncrasies or complexities, the reality is the scheduling methodology doesn’t necessarily have to be any different. In fact who says it needs to be any different to a factory production line or any other scheduling process? Scheduling is about what resources you have, what are their production rates and what are your schedule targets – regardless of the activity being carried out. Resources and production rates are topics for another blog, this blog will discuss schedule targets.

So what should you target (focus on) in your scheduling so as to be most effective? I believe the key targets for an activity, should be around providing adequate inventories for the following activity. Don’t get me wrong, still schedule the equipment, such as drills, excavators and draglines, processing plants, etc. You need to do this to ensure that production targets are being met, the right quality ore is going to be mined, etc. And in fact you need to schedule equipment, as it generates the inventory for the following activity and also depletes inventory from the preceding activity.

What I am saying, is consider what the outputs of the schedule are and what you actually focus on when carrying out the schedule, i.e. the schedule target. So while you are scheduling the drill, keep an eye on the drilled inventory and schedule the drill accordingly, so as to maintain inventories within the target bands. Going back to Blog (1), schedule the drill with an eye primarily on what quantity and quality of broken stocks will result. But you still need to schedule the excavation equipment, as it will deplete the broken stocks and so this is required to calculate resulting inventories. Carry out a similar process with all scheduled mining activities on site.

Now of course if you’re scheduling to target inventory bands, then a key question becomes what should those bands be? Stay tuned for Blog (5).

So does anyone agree? Does anyone disagree? Would love to hear some feedback.