In block/panel caving mines, the start of production depends on the on-time execution of the various mine developments. A major problem in mine development is associated to the plan and execution of horizontal developments, due to the high number of active faces, resources and activities that needs to be scheduled simultaneously. Additionally, planning requires adding the diverse operational interferences that occurs during the process. This paper proposes that discrete event simulation methods can be used as an effective tool to quantify different mine development strategies and operational improvements to achieve mine excellence. Modeling and simulations considered the Esmeralda mine sector of El Teniente, where a database of the different tasks involved was previously collected in the field. Time of each unit operation and time of interferences were analyzed and included as variables for the simulation model. Calibration of the stochastic model was a 2.4 % error from the actual advance of horizontal developments at the mine. Once the calibration was performed, two scenarios were tested. The first considered an improvement on the management of interferences and the second an improvement in the excavation cycle using emulsion. A reduction on the interferences means an improvement to 35 % and the use of emulsions an improvement of 17 % in the advance of horizontal developments. The result shows that the use of the simulation technique could be useful for strategic mining development planning and a support tool for the decision making process of planners.
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