Held once every four years, the AusIMM Open Pit Operators Conference (OPO) provides small to large open pit mining operations with the opportunity to exchange ideas and recent learnings on issues between industry, suppliers, innovators, regulators and all stakeholders.
This year, OPO 2016 was held in gold mining town Kalgoorlie, located 593 km from Perth in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. It was held from November 15 to 16, 2016. The theme of this year’s conference was “Adapting to Change”, an ongoing requirement of business improvement to be successful.
“In some cases, this means constantly revisiting existing or historical operations, streamlining mine planning/scheduling to deliver improved outcomes based on the changed economic requirements. This may involve contraction or expansion of operations/equipment or different transitions between open pit and underground mining to drive productivity and efficiency in mining,” stated the AusIMM conference overview.
Throughout the two days, we heard from mining companies (mainly gold), consultants, academia and the METS industry (Mining Equipment, Technology & Services). Mining companies presented in the areas of data analysis, productivity improvement, geotech, grade control and reconciliation. It was interesting learning about various sites’ operational challenges and approaches to overcome them.
Some innovative topics that were presented included open pit edge protection, autonomous trucks, in-pit insitu recovery by CSIRO and unmanned aerial vehicle survey experience at St Ives.
On behalf of Dassault Systèmes, I presented a paper on the Use of Robust Design Methodology for the Production Scale Definition in Open Pit Mining, which was initially developed in Chile by our colleagues. The points I addressed included:
- What is Robustness?
- Robust design methodology in Manufacturing vs Mining
- Sources of uncertainty affecting decision making
- Capital-intensive mine design parameters
- Traditional methodology vs Hill of Value methodology
- Process automation and workflow
- Case study and results
I also attended the WIMne
t (Women in Mining network) breakfast during the conference and heard from Vanessa Torres, Vice President of Production, Logistics & Infrastructure at BHP Billiton. She talked about getting rid of the bias within leadership roles in the resources industry, and it was positive to hear that this topic is becoming increasingly discussed by organizations.
Read the paper on Robust Design Methodology here.
We will next be on the road for the GEOVIA Community Conference in Namibia on November 29!
Olga Abdrashitova
Latest posts by Olga Abdrashitova (see all)
- Using Mining Direction for Pushback Generation in GEOVIA Whittle - September 13, 2017
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- Highlights from the Open Pit Operators Conference - November 25, 2016
