An imperialist competitive algorithm for solving the production scheduling problem in open pit mine

Production scheduling (planning) of an open-pit mine is the procedure during which the rock blocks are assigned to different production periods in a way that the highest net present value of the project achieved subject to operational constraints. The paper introduces a new and computationally less expensive meta-heuristic technique known as imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) for long-term production planning of open pit mines. The proposed algorithm modifies the original rules of the assimilation process. The ICA performance for different levels of the control factors has been studied and the results are presented. The result showed that ICA could be efficiently applied on mine production planning problem.