Timing Project Manager

The Timing Project Manager (Surface Project Manager or Underground Project Manager) applies to both surface and underground mining for file organization and selection. All files and most settings and configurations used in the mine scheduling are found in the manager. Each topic is described below in detail. Note that some topics listed below may refer to panels for Underground Timing or Pits for Surface Equipment Timing.

Settings

Coloring Settings: These settings are from the Report Options screen from the equipment timing command. Defaults can be set here before running the actual schedule. Explanation of this dialog is found in the help documentation for Underground Timing or Surface Equipment Timing.

Destination Settings: This gives the ability to assign destinations to pits, which can then be reported separately in the timing report. For example, if the material from some pits need to be sent to the waste pile while the material from other pits need to be sent to the processing plant, adding destinations attributes will provide an additional category for reporting. To assign destinations to pits, you must open the Timing Project Manager through the Surface Equipment Timing command and select pit polylines. When editing destination settings, the below dialog will appear. Clicking the Enable Destinations button will simply add a DESTINATION attribute to each bench in each pit polyline. This Destination can be modified manually with the Edit Pit command or according to a grade parameter file via the 3D Pick Function within Surface Equipment Timing. Clicking the Disable Destinations button will remove this DESTINATION attribute from the pit polylines.

Attribute Weighting Settings: This gives the ability to weight average attributes by other attributes, both calculated and internal. Add new lines with the + button. Enter in the Attribute, or pick it from the Keyword Help button. Then dropdown the Weight By Attribute. This will show up in the Report Formatter once the schedule is ran.

Mining Precedence Rules: This allows for automatic precedence using an user-defined sequence. When using commands such as AutoPlace Panel by Text, it does not set precedence. Using this command makes sure panels do not start before they are exposed or available to be mined. Each rule is shown at the top. Start by choosing the Select button and select two entries that are compared. Then choose which one goes first, if it is wrong, use the Swap button. Give it a name (optional) and hit Apply. The Preview button will show the order in the lower window. The Screen Pick button allows for choosing precedence on a screen. When using Screen Pick start by picking on or inside of first panel polyline and then pick on or inside of second panel polyline.

To use this precedence, turn on the Use Precedence option in the Sequence Window, as seen here and the blocks and panels will reorganize to fit the order.

Drawing Event Types: Drawing events are entities in the drawing at a specific location that will be used for a marker in the schedule as an option for a delay. This event can be used to delay equipment, switch crews, move other equipment, etc. When the schedule crosses over the insertion point of the drawing event (usually text) the event will trigger the delay or effect. The text/drawing entity in the drawing should be inserted to the position where the delay where occur and in the AutoCAD layer defined in the Capture Layer window. The Event Key and description can be used in the reporting of the schedule to create additional reported items.

There are options to set the layer, give it a full description and internal event key name. The Productivity can be set to not working, working (as normal), and not producing (working, but not moving any material). The event delay length is set here by number of shifts. Calendar based will determine if the shift is off in the calendar. If the box is checked, and that shift is off in the calendar already, then it will not take off any more. If it is off, then it will apply to only the next working shift(s) for not working or producing. Additoinal Units can be used to also set other units off during the same period. For example, if a longwall is down due to a move, then the CM working with it can also be down for the same time. There is also an option to Delay Only Additional Units. This can be used to set one unit down, when a different unit crosses the drawing event. This allows for clever equipment delays and precedence by using different drawing events.

Calendar Event Types:Calendar events are named events that will determine equipment down time. The default event in the calendar is Manual. The other events are set under the Calendar Event Types and Calendar Event Definition. Calendar events can be any event that will cause a delay, such as a routine maintenance, a long wall move, or a dragline dead head. The Productivity Effect allows the option of Not Working at all, Working as normal, or Not Producing (yet still working with crews, using hours, but not mining).

Equipment

Equipment Set: The productivity of the unit (crew) may vary from shift to shift, up to 4 shifts a day. The number of shifts is set in the Timing window where the sequence of pits or panels is set. The average productivity rate is used for scheduling, however the production rate for the particular pit or panel may be adjusted by setting the difficulty factor or adding delays for that pit or panel. The first window is the edit equipment screen with a columnar display of equipment. Crews can be defined to work with a specific unit, or can switch from unit to unit based on the schedule.

Add and Edit will bring up the next screen for detailed entry.

The Unit of the Production value is defined by a rate unit setting. Equipment may mine either tons, tonnes, CY or CM, Distance and Linear Advance. The difference between distance and linear foot of advance settings is that latter one is a combined length of all pathways/entries mined (underground only), and distance is just distance moved, of a longwall for example.

Enter the Advance Rate/shift or the Advance Rate/hour and the other will be automatically calculated based on the Hours/shift. The Retreat Rate/shift is for Distance and Linear ft of Advance in underground equipment only. The availability value of less than 1.0 will reduce effective production rate of the equipment. 0.94 is a 94% productivity of the full shift.

Underground units may be assigned an Advance minimum and/or maximum height, so that the extra rock will have to be mined or correspondingly unmined coal will be left in the seam if the maximum miner height is less than combined coal and rock parting thicknesses. These settings affect the underground mine timing only.

The maintenance settings provide the ability to schedule a delay for routine or major maintenance/repair of the equipment based on the number of shifts worked. Add in the length of the delay and the number of shifts to determine the frequency.

If operational cost per hour is specified, the total cost will appear in the production report.

The extraction (recovery) factor is used to adjust the amount of material mined form given area to account for certain technical limitations of the equipment such as inability to mine out corners, or not cleaning the top and bottom of ore. This machine will always use that recovery rate.

Advanced Options:

Under the Advanced options the variation of equipment-related Difficulty Factor with time, depth or bench number may be specified. Resulting from the advanced options, the difficulty factor is a product of coefficients calculated for given date, thickness and bench number. The final difficulty factor used in calculations is a product of location-specific and equipment-specific difficulty factor.

In the Period End Date column, the difficulty for the date is for next, later date, or last one if no later entry exists. For the thickness column the value of difficulty factor between two entries in the table is a linear approximation. The rehandle value is calculated in the same fashion and passed over to the report, not being used in calculations, but can be used in the report in equations to calculate the total amount mined. The difficulty will modify the rate, and the rehandle is reported. These are not necessarily always the same, linear factors. The Bench Specific Difficulty will be used for surface equipment mining on that bench number, and use that difficulty factor to change the rate of the equipment.

Selecting Edit All from the first screen brings up this editor where all equipment may be viewed and edited. Both the first screen and this one have the import and export buttons.

Calendars

New or Existing Calendar: Highlight the Calendar tree, and the New Calendar button is activated if no calendars are present. If some are present, the edit button will also be active for editing a calendar. If it is a new calendar, the Calendar Name box appears to enter a name.

The Equipment Calendar allows for entity production down time. By default, entities are working every day, every shift. Entities include equipment, crews, pits and panels. Days and shifts defined in this calendar as down-time are taken into account during scheduling routines. 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. The calendar will clean out, or purge a schedule for a crew which is no longer present.
Date Selection: The calendar should initiate on the current day. Use the left/right arrows to scroll through the months and years. The current or selected day is shown in blue. The shifts appear on the right of each day. There can be up to 4 shifts. If the shift is green, then all entities are working; if it is yellow, then some are working and some are down. If the shifts are black, then all entities are down on that day and shift.
Event Rule Definition: This section is where the event down times are created and edited. Apply adds the event, Reset clears it for the next assignment.
Event Entity Filter: The event list contains the Equipment, Pits or Panels and Crews. The choices for filtering are All Entities, All Equipment, All Crews, All Pits/Panels, Selected (highlight the desired Entity), and Matching (highlight the Entity to find the match).
Shifts: The number of shifts checked here will display next to each day.
Due to/Calendar Events: The options for down time are selected here. The default event is Manual. The other events are set under the Calendar Event Types, activated by clicking the button next to the "Due to" window. Calendar events can be anything that will cause a delay, such as a routine maintenance, a long wall move, or a dragline dead head. The Productivity Effect allows the option of Not Working at all, Working as normal, or Not Producing (yet still working).

Repeat for/Label: This setting is how often the down time will repeat. This can be from a day, month, year or indefinite. This event can have a name, which is entered in the Label window. The calendar will refer to this label when encountering and reporting this event.
Events for Date Selected/All Defined Events: This window displays the events for the highlighted day. If the List All Rules is on, then all the Events will be displayed here, no matter which day is highlighted.
Rule Report: This report displays all of the rules defined for down time within the calendar.

Year Report: This reports all days for the selected calendar year.
Unit Report: This reports all equipment and dates defined in the calendar. See example below.

SaveAs/Load: This saves the calendar, optionally as a new name. Load will open a new one, and give the option to append to the existing, open calendar.

Timing Assignment

The Timing Assignment allows for setting the current sequence. The Assignment is similar to the TIM file in the timing routines. The equipment used and which panels or pits they are mining are shown. The Set Current button controls which one will be loaded and used. Shown here is both a surface mine and an underground mine example.

Panels

This displays the selected underground panels in the mine plan assignment. An example is shown here.

Attribute Groups

Attribute groups are Pit or Panel Attributes assigned to the pits and panels for timing. When timing the pits or panels, there are additional attributes that will be calculated and reported in addition to the Non-Key and Key quantities. If these are defaults that should be applied to all the panels or pits, then they should be entered here. Any quality values, density, or difficulty attributes can be defined here either just as a value, or as a grid file with varying values. The Reserved Attribute Names window displays the reserved words that will be recognized in the timing routines, and how they should be entered in. Selecting Keyword Help brings up the Reserved Attribute Names. If the grid name is red, as shown here, then the file cannot be found. They need to be colored black for successful use.

The Reserved Attribute Names are defined in a little more detail here:

THICKNESS: Key strata thickness: Will report any other thickness values, this is used mostly for underground timing.
DENSITY: Key strata density: Will report Key density, is used mostly in underground timing to calculate the tons. In surface timing, the tons are already in the pits.
ROCKTHICK: Non-key strata thickness: Reports the Non-Key thickness mostly for underground timing.
ROCKDENS: Non-key strata density: Reports the Non-Key density mostly for underground timing.
TIMEGRID: User-defined grid to use for timing: This will be any additional grid the user would like to add for reporting.
DIFICULTY: Difficulty factor on advance just for underground timing: This will alter the underground equipment rate on advance.
RET_DIFF: Difficulty factor on retreat for underground timing: This will alter the underground equipment rate on retreat.
DIFF_BENCH*: Difficulty factor for bench * for surface timing: This will speed up or slow down the equipment as it mines the specified bench. If a value is above 1, such as 1.2, then it will mine 20% slower at that point in the grid, or everywhere if it is set to value. If it is less than 1, then it will mine faster at that point. Difficulty is calculated by the equation:DIFF=100/(100-%reduction).
XXX_BENCH*: This is the dominate attribute that is most widely used in this command for surface pits. All quality grids will be defined in this fashion, for each bench. The example above, BTU_BENCH1, is defined in this way. All quality parameters need to be entered as the NAME_BENCH*.
SURFACE: This attribute is used for the 3D Pick window to drape the pit blocks onto the ground surface.
SURFACE_BENCH*: This attribute defines the bottom elevation grid for each bench. It is used to display the blocks in the 3D Pick window properly, so the benches are represented accurately.
TIMING_SPLIT: This will globally split all blocks that contain both Key and Nonkey material into two blocks that may be scheduled separately, by either the same unit, or different units. The split is into two portions - key and non-key. Entering a non-zero value will cause a split. Additionally three values are supported as pertains to precedence. Enter in one of these values in for the attribute to split it.

1 = Both OB and KEY needs to be completed to satisfy precedence
2 = OB portion needs to be completed to satisfy precedence
3 = KEY portion needs to be completed to satisfy precedence
TIMING_SPLIT_BENCH*: This attribute is the same as TIMING_SPLIT, but is only applied to the specified bench number.

Reports

Some of the reports generated in the scheduling will appear here for other options to report. These are also accessed in the calendar or after a schedule is run.

Data Links

This shows the link of the data when it is linked to an external source for reporting.

Skip Past Report Archiving in Project Database: By default, all reports generated with timing commands will be saved in a backup of the Timing Project Manager as an .mrd file (the file name will be the same as the .mpd file, just with a different extension). If many reports are generated, this archive can become quite large, and may even slow down processing time when running the timing command. When this option is enabled, no reports will be archived, preventing potential slow-down from large .mrd files. It is recommended to enable this option when you have no need for old timing reports.

Check for Conflicts: When enabled, this option will check for any conflicts in the pits. If a conflict is detected, you will be prompted to display a report of the conflicts when you start the Surface Equipment Timing command. Conflict checks include:

Pits with duplicate names
Empty pits (no tonnage/volume in the pit)
Pits with invalid direction assignment
Pits with invalid precedence (can occur if a precedence rule is assigned, but the preceding pit is deleted or not selected for timing). For example, If Pit A must be mined prior to Pit B, but Pit B is later deleted/not selected for timing.
Pits outside the bounds of Attribute Group Grids

Pull-Down Menu Location: Reserves/Timing in Surface Mining and Underground in Underground Mining
Keyboard Command: stime_project or utime_project

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