Note: Equipment Calendar is also documented in the Underground Menu section.
The Equipment Calendar function allows for crew production down time. By default, equipment is working every day, every shift. Days and shifts to take off are defined in this calendar. These shut downs are taken into account during timing calculations. The assignment pattern is very flexible: it works for a particular crew or all crews, for a particular shift or the whole day and allows replication of the defined behavior over period of time as desired. Please note that the calendar will clean out or purge, a schedule for a crew which is no longer present.
To define or check a schedule for the particular date, select year and click month and then day buttons. The selected month and day tiles will be highlighted. The arrow buttons next to Jan and Jun scroll to the next month. The list box in the lower right corner of the dialog displays the list of units having downtimes at the particular date with shift numbers shown. Also, every day tile has a column of small toggles on the right corresponding to the shifts. These toggles are colored red if all the equipment is down on the corresponding shifts, yellow if only some crews are not working on that day and not colored (gray) if everything is working. This information refers to the particular unit or all crews depending on the value of toggle in the upper right corner. The schedule for the particular shift may be changed manually by clicking on the corresponding toggle box of that day. To assign a desired pattern for any extended period of time, simulate the following scheme. It will read as a sentence as you go down the window.
1. Set the beginning date
2. Set the crew selection toggle and pull-down as desired.
3. Select shifts to set and action (working or not)
4. Select appropriate time pattern in the
Repeat pull-down (e.g. Weekly)
5. Set the duration (e.g. 5 years)
6. Click on the Apply button
Or it will read as follows: "Selected Unit, Scraper On All shifts
should be Down, Repeat Weekly for 10 Years, Apply. "
The left-hand-side will be updated to reflect the applied pattern for the month shown. The shift toggles will either turn red or yellow. The current schedule information is stored in a .CAL file and may be saved and later loaded under other file names using Save As and Load buttons.
It should be noted that the changes are absolute, but relative: if the user applies 1st shift down and then in a separate step applies 2nd shift down, then the 1st shift is working. If after selecting Apply, there was an error, the UNDO button will go back one step to where the calendar was previously.
The calendar always defines three shifts per day, but actual timing may be limited to one or two shifts per day during the timing routines, or in the define equipment, by setting other shifts to near zero production.
If current equipment definition does not have the equipment used in the current calendar, the user will be prompted to remove that information from the calendar to keep it clean. If it is undesirable that the unit information be removed, then say NO and it will remain.
Once the calendar is completed, reports can be generated by year, or by equipment, and saved as a text file or dumped to Excel. Now that the previously defined equipment have a schedule or calendar to follow, the next step in the mine planning can be the Timing (surface or underground). The Unit Report uses the Report Formatter for flexible report formats. Shown is an example of Totals Only by Equipment.
The year report will write out a report for the selected year as a text
file. The 3 shifts are filled with O or o or _ to indicate if
equipment is off. Shown is an example report.
Purge Old will empty out any defined down times from that entered
date and back. It should be entered as shown.
Copy Unit will copy another units calendar to the selected unit.
This saves time in editing and creating the calendar for various
equipment if two pieces have the same schedule. Simply pick from the
list the unit to copy the schedule from.
The following example illustrates the procedure for predicting
holidays in the coming years.
As shown, all shifts will be down (not working) on December
25th. This will be repeated every year for 10 years. The
corresponding shift activity toggles will highlight red, signifying no
shifts
are active that day. That day will not be included in the production of
the mine timing set with
this calendar. This can be verified by looking at December several
years later. All 3 shift bars should be red, signifying all equipment
are down. With very little practice, several calendars can be used for
what-if scenarios
applied to the timing for short and long range mine planning.
Pulldown Menu Location:
Surface in Advanced Mining
Keyboard Command: calendar
Prerequisite: Equipment
should be defined for the routine to be used in its full capacity
File Name: \lsp\mineutil.arx