Timing Project Manager

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 Underground Timing or Surface Equipment Timing.
  

• 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.
  

 

• 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. Linear Feet of Advance is calculated as the area extracted divided by the entry width assigned to the panels. Note that this calculation can be skewed if the entry width varies, or if the pillar dimensions vary.
  
     Linear Ft Advance = Pillar Area * Extraction Ratio / Entry Width
  

  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. Rates may also be specified in the drawing itself by placing a piece of text on the RATE layer. The value in the text should represent the rate per hour. Note that a piece of text on the RATE layer will temporarily override the normal rate specified on this dialog.
  

  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

Panels

Attribute Groups

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

Reports

Data Links

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.