OPTIMIZATION OF PRODUCTIVITY WITH SURFACE MINER USING CONVEYOR LOADING AND TRUCK DISPATCH SYSTEM

This paper aims at optimizing the productivity at the surface miner’s face with conveyor loading and dump-truck dispatch system to minimize the down times of surface miner as well as trucks. The surface miner was working in opencut method in a limestone mine located in the Southern part of India. Time study was carried out during three working shifts (each of eight-hour duration) for productivity analysis. A model has been developed and simulated in MATLAB for the productivity of surface miner considering the impact of two major parameters – number of trucks and available face length. The number of trucks for optimum production was found to be five. However, the 5 % and 95 % confidence interval for the number of trucks was 2.3 and 7.4 respectively for the case study face. It was also observed that the face of 330 m length was sufficient for the surface miner to work efficiently