The business of stockpile management has changed. Advanced 3D deposition modelling is transforming stockpile management.
For many years, bulk material suppliers have struggled with the management of stock inventories and the delivery of consistent and predictable product quality.
To succeed commercially, exporters need to have precise knowledge of the quality of any given batch of material, and maximize the consistency between batches of the same type. When the process of delivery involves stockpiling of the material prior to delivery, the supplier has a number of problems to deal with including:
- How can we ensure we know where the material that we want is?
- How do we ensure we can deliver the specific quality and properties to satisfy the customer's requirements?
Unfortunately the material is unlikely to fall off the delivery trucks in this ideal configuration, ready to go.
When it comes to bulk material handling, the ‘blending operation’ is a crucial part of the process. Iron ore, for instance, is generally evaluated on two measures when it comes to exports: quality composition and short-term grading consistency. The first relates to the ‘purity’ of the ore (the amount of alumina, phosphorous, etc. relative to iron), and the second refers to consistency between batches (that is, differences in quality between each ship transport). The core function of the blending operation is to take natural variations in input and produce, as far as possible, an accurate and consistent quality and grade of output, according to export needs.
The Troublesome Grey Area
Due to its importance, blending of different compositions of material has traditionally been one of the key operations that has caused most consternation in the material handling and optimization process. The difficulty with blending requirements and the stockpiling operation is that the material must be stacked layer by layer according to material properties in the hope that reclaiming operations will result in the desired consistency and quality outcomes. While this decreases fluctuations in delivered material, it is an imperfect approach due to the sheer number of variables involved.
Over time, the industry has come to adopt various modifications to the process, designed to account for some of these variables and improve the accuracy of the blending function. The use of mathematical modelling (e.g., goal programming or the genetic algorithm), measurement association techniques, or simple operations based on broad expected inputs are typical of the methods used.
While there is no doubt that these methods have improved the accuracy of the process, they all share a critical limitation: they are all fundamentally based on abstract modelling, assumptions, and incomplete data. They all, essentially, rely on a degree of guesswork.
Eliminating the Grey Area
What if there was a way to skip the estimates, skip the assumptions, and simply map the precise composition of the stockpile directly, in real-time, as it is growing and shrinking? It may seem too good to be true, but this is precisely what 3D deposition-based modelling achieves. It sits within a wider stockpile management system that measures, tracks, and traces material quality upon its entry into the stockyard, and on its exit to other processes. In combination with measurement technology, this allows the creation of a stockpile model that is accurate not only in terms of size and shape but also in quality composition and without having to make any assumptions beforehand. Highly sophisticated algorithms are able to calculate where individual pieces of material are likely to fall and end up as they are stacked and reclaimed.
This development represents a major step change in solving the challenge of stockpile management. State of the art deposition-based modelling is the key improvement in the switch from ‘necessary guesstimation’ to direct, real-time measurement.
Accuracy Means Profit
The power of this new approach is proven with leading mining companies able to completely automate their stockyards using the deposition-based model as the basis for an integrated stockpile management system. The graphical features and accuracy of such systems enable and enhance complete stockyard control for sites thousands of kilometers away.
It is difficult to overstate the business benefits that accurate stockpile modelling and management offers. Any deficiencies in a company’s knowledge of the quality and consistency of its own stock will translate into lost revenue, and deposition-modelling is all about removing these uncertainties. It gives suppliers far greater power to optimize their supply chains and ensure delivery of consistent product, with the result that contracts are delivered on time and within specification. This keeps customers happy, and also means a significant reduction in quality penalties and vessel demurrage costs, as well as end-of-month inventory adjustments and write-downs. For many companies, these costs can total to six or seven figure sums every year.
Losses like these may have been considered affordable and unavoidable in times of the commodities boom. In today’s leaner era of under-pressure margins and volatile commodity markets, the possible savings through removing uncertainty in the supply chain are significant. It’s time to realize the benefits of accuracy over guesswork.
Eka's InSight CM - 3D Stockpile Manager is 3D mining software that provides a real-time 3D volumetric model of stockpiles for flexible machine control, quality analysis, and prediction. With 3D views that include detailed quality data on stockpiles, mining companies can make better stacking and reclaiming decisions.
