Heuristics for integrated blending optimisation in a mining supply chain

In a mining supply chain, products from mines are blended at port terminals to ensure that set of blending targets (such as grade and qualities) achieved. The production scheduling problem each individual mine the for network ports constitute integrated optimisation, which involves modelling material flows mine-side pits port-side stockpiles. Due scale bilinear constraints behaviours, is computationally hard solve by any available optimisers. This paper extends upon decomposition-based algorithm in literature, was first multiple over time periods. our paper, prune routine proposed progressively update mixed integer program during rolling-horizon heuristic. Experiments have shown this extension produces solutions higher quality than original algorithm. Furthermore, ranking-based topological sorting heuristic presented selecting units mineral deposits, known ’blocks’. average computation can be reduced 75.97% when implemented. On top these extensions, an adaptive adopted algorithm, featuring faster convergence solution same time. Comparing results on average, yields improvement 12.67% while reducing 65.09%.