Optimizing Pit to Port Logistics

The Arena Solution

Recognizing SMS as a leader in modelling and analytics technologies, the SMS team was engaged to review supply chain logistics to ensure target throughput levels could be achieved and proposed infrastructure was appropriately sized. 

Simulation modelling provides a means of understanding the likely performance of supply chains with complex interacting subsystems. Having developed numerous models of mining supply chains, SMS knew that the Arena simulation software was eminently suited to simulate and evaluate the supply chain operations. 

SMS worked with project stakeholders to review the proposed supply chain design and establish a ‘base case’ scenario representing the most likely value of parameters and assumptions to be provided as input in the modelling system.
 

Broadly, the Arena model simulated:

• Production from both underground and opencut sources
• Stockpiling of coal, as necessary, in ROM and product stockpile
• Coal Preparation Plant (CPP) operations
• Train Load Out (TLO) operations
• Arrival of third party trains into the proposed balloon loop
• Transit of trains to the export terminal
• Arrival and loading of export vessels for delivery to the customer

Importantly, the Arena model incorporated the variability inherent in the proposed supply chain. Variability was applied to:

• Mine production rates
• Arrival of trains into the balloon loop
• Arrival of export vessels to the port
• Frequency and duration of unplanned delay events
• Frequency and duration of weather delays

By creating an Arena model driven by externally defined data, SMS were able to simulate a large range of scenarios to provide an understanding of the impact that changes in parameters and assumptions had on overall supply chain throughput.