The Blast Oriented Production Control System is made of:
A methodology to install acquisition tools for production control in open-pit operations.
1) A database enabling to retrieve and to store data coming from the acquisition system and to correlate this information on a blast per blast basis.
2) A data management system (a production analysis software linked to the database) allowing to analyse production parameters over periods or on a blast per blast basis.
The system includes acquisition, data organisation, and production analysis. It allows the continuous control of the production chain from drilling and blasting to primary crushing. All information can be organised on a blast per blast basis and thus allows analysing each single production chain. Consequently, it gives the possibility to control those primary chains (technically and economically) and subsequently to improve them. This represents its main specificity compared to other production monitoring systems.
In terms of data monitoring the system is designed to be rather flexible, which allows the import of both automatically recorded data (from files) based on site specific import routines and to enter data manually directly into the Access database.
The main characteristics of the production control system are:
- It is specific to open-pit mining and the quarrying industry.
- It allows to rebuild the primary production chain starting with blasting, which is often discontinuous and fuzzy for analysis.
- It allows to control and analyse productivity of each single production chain starting with a blast.
- It allows to improve productivity of each single production chain, by acting on blasting or other production parameters.