Operational ore/waste classification at a surface gold mine

Abstract

The daily determination of ore blocks and waste blocks in a surface gold mine can be formulated as a binary integer programming problem. While the geometric mining constraints complicate the problem beyond the capabilities of standard algorithms, the special structure of the problem allows the development of a fast alternative. Using the theory of generalized Lagrange multipliers, the problem can be decomposed into a series of one dimensional problems amenable to a dynamic programming solution.