A Dynamic Scheduling Model for Underground Metal Mines under Equipment Failure Conditions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

 

·       About the ore grade fluctuation with the improvement rate of 49.4%, please briefly explain how the ore grade fluctuation was considered in the rescheduled plan?

·       Different mechanisms are offered for the dynamic scheduling and authors have shown the mechanisms schematically using different colours for better visualisation of scheduling plans (Fig 2 to 4). Having too many colours can make the data visualization more complex and harder to understand. If using many colours is inevitable, coloured sections should be well described to avoid confusion.

·       What method was used to validate (model verification) the model?

 

·       Multiple simultaneous failure is a common reason of delay in mining operations which is suggested to be considered for future dynamic schedule model development. 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors present a very interesting topic in this manuscript and develop a dynamic scheduling model for the mining equipment failure problem, but there are some issues that should be addressed before further consideration.

 

My major comments are listed as follows:

1.In the introduction, the literature review is simply poorly structured and it is difficult to recognize the gaps presented by the authors, i.e., little consideration of the dynamic scheduling of mining equipment.

2.In “Dynamic scheduling process” section, The elaboration in Figure 1 is not clear, for example, how to determine whether it is level 3 or level 4 in an IF fault? How is the coupling relationship between them understood?

3.In Figure 9 " The dynamic scheduling characteristics", why are the “Class III failure and Class IV failure” in a box?

4. What is the logic of Chapter 2? How are the scheduling methods in it applied and reflected in the later text?

5. In Section 3.3 Model Solution, why do the authors first uniformly cross and variate before choosing? Is it reasonable to do so and how to prove it?

6. The case presented in Chapter 4 is NSGA-II, while the one presented in Chapter 3 of this paper is GA, which is inconsistent, so what is the solution method proposed in this paper to solve the model in the end? And the text only gives a result table here, how to prove the authenticity of the result and the validity of the method?

7. How is the dynamic scheduling method proposed in this paper represented and illustrated?

8.Lack of management insights in the conclusions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear authors!

Underground exploitation is challenging itself and to be able to meet the production demands of ore quantity is making the pressure on the work scheduling that needs to adapt to everchanging situation. The proposed methodology to solve the underground mining scheduling challenges is very nice contribution. Although your article is well structured, and your theme is more than interesting, there are some areas that should be improved:

-          Line 81 - 85: you are stating in the literature review what you have done. This is more suitable for the sections stated later in the article.

-          Line 88 – 89: you are stating what you have done. The introduction should be addressing the need for the action and not to describe the solution. Highlight the problem instead of the solution. Also, there is on refence to the generic algorithm (later you stated the reference in the line 308 but it should be stated the first time it is used).

-          Line 90 – 95: this is more of conclusion than the introduction so this paragraph should be in the conclusion section

-          Line 96 – 103 is the extended table od content and since the article should be structured in scientific way and according to the MDPI standards this is not contributing to the article so it can be removed.

-          Line 103 – 105: this is your goal and not original scientific contribution, so this is irrelevant for the article.

-          Line 117: in the Table 1. You are using commercial expressions for the equipment, but the professional expressions should be used (drilling jumbo - drill rig and so on) and short explanation what every peace of equipment is used for should be stated like in the Table 6.

-          Line 171: expression “scaling jumbo” should be replaced with the correct one

-          Line 276: Figure 10 is showing the main process of model solving but later in the text you are stating (1) Encoding and Decoding, (2) Population initialization, (3) Genetic Evolution, (4) Termination Criterion and (5) Output Results that are not stated in the Figure 10. This main solving algorithm would benefit if the stated part would be marked on the algorithm.

-          Line 296: you are using the swap mutation, but you are not explaining why you chose this mutation.

-          Line 300: give short explanation why this methos weas used.

-          Line 318 and 230: the expressions “drilling jumbo”, “drilling jumbo”, “charging dolly”, “scaling jumbo”, “bolting jumbo” should be stated as non-commercial expressions.

-          Line 338: chapter 4.3. Result analysis is discussion and should be named correctly.

Best regards.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

None.