A variable neighbourhood descent algorithm for the open-pit mine production scheduling problem with metal uncertainty

Uncertainty is an inherent aspect of the open-pit mine production scheduling problem (MPSP); however, little is reported in the literature about solution methods for the stochastic versions of the problem. In this paper, two variants of a variable neighbourhood descent algorithm are proposed for solving the MPSP with metal uncertainty. The proposed methods are tested and compared on actual large-scale instances, and very good solutions, with an average deviation of less than 3% from optimality, are obtained within a few minutes up to a few hours.