The Pacesetter mine model

As part of Syncrude Canada's continuing efforts to improve operations, its oil sands mine was compared to other surface mines in order to determine possible areas of improvement. The two basic tools used in this process were influence diagrams, which capture pictorially all of the factors that may affect a particular outcome, and benchmarking, which allows mathematical relationships to be developed for the various influences. These relationships estimate the magnitude of the influence on an outcome and allow prediction of changes in outcomes when an influence is changed. A model was developed, using data from four different mines, to make the comparisons with Syncrude's operation. The results show that Syncrude could improve costs by ca 10% if all of the superior methods and ideas used at other mines could be adopted. 1 fig