Patent ID: 7853439

Claim:
A method of generating mine plan data for operation of a mine, comprising: (a) obtaining mine data describing material in the mine which may be removed from the mine over a whole life of the mine; (b) dividing, while a current remaining life of mine is longer than a defined time period, the current remaining life of mine into a plurality of time periods comprising a first time period and a plurality of subsequent time periods at least some of which are longer than the first time period such that the subsequent time periods tend to increase relative to the first time period; (c) generating mine plan data for the current remaining life of mine by iterating through each of the plurality of time periods and (i) determining for each of the plurality of time periods which material is to be extracted from the mine and which of that material is to be sent to product for the remaining life of mine; (ii) determining for each of the plurality of time periods which material is less than a marginal grade and is to be sent to waste; and (iii) requiring in each of the subsequent time periods, all material not sent to product be sent to waste; (d) storing first time period data of the mine plan data generated in step (c); (e) updating the current life of mine to begin after the first time period; (f) repeating steps (b) to (e) for the whole life of mine; and (g) concatenating the first time period data stored in each step (d) to form whole life of mine plan data describing planned material movements for the whole life of mine.