What is the right size for each of the pieces of equipment in the mine ?
Simulation models themselves cannot completely answer this question. Fortunately, they can give the most difficult to obtain piece of information; the difference in production because of different sized equipment. The charts below show the average daily production for a 10% change in the size of the pieces of equipment in the model. What is left for the analyst is to meld other information such as capital costs, operating costs, and the value of production to determine if the increased investment in the larger equipment is a good one. Note that in practice, the sizes of more that one piece or type of equipment are changed in cases. From Chart 1, we see the effects of a 10% change in the maximum production rate for the shovel. For a 10% decrease, the total production rate decreases by 9.3% but for a 10% increase, the total production rate increases by only 3.4%; significantly less than 10%. This is partially explained with a later question (Chart 6) that identifies restrictions in the m
