Open pit mine planning is a key process in defining mineral reserves and their efficient extraction.

Open-pit mines are extracted by the mining of sequential pits called pushbacks. Pushbacks need to satisfy complex geometrical constraints to ensure the efficient usage of equipment. To date, no algorithms that account for those constraints are commercially available. Therefore, pushback design is done by engineers relying on their expertise. In this presentation, we show the process of developing a new algorithm that produces close to optimal practical pushbacks, and we illustrate its performance in real mines.