Material flow diagram

The material flow diagram defines how material moves from sources in the pit, through intermediate locations such as stockpiles and processes, to destinations like final products or waste dumps. Without a valid flow, material cannot be mined or moved, and the schedule will not run. If something is misconfigured, the affected item appears with a red outline or is coloured red so you can correct it before scheduling.

The essentials

A flow consists of nodes (locations) and movements (arrows that represent how material moves between nodes). Nodes model mine entities such as pits, stockpiles, and processing plants. Movements define the paths material can take and the rules that govern those paths.

An example material flow

Material always originates from a source, such as an activity area within a pit node.

Activity areas assigned to a pit contribute to the pit’s totals. When allocating movements from a pit node, you indicate where the material will move to from the associated activity areas.

Pits are spatially defined by activity areas, while stockpiles and products are virtual locations. You can link virtual nodes to named locations in the haulage network to calculate travel distances and paths.

The named locations of stockpiles and the crusher from the haulage network within the 3D scene

After placing nodes on the chart, draw movements between them to represent material flow. For each movement, select the materials that can travel along it and configure related properties such as haulage method and priorities.

When multiple movements exist from a pit—such as to stockpiles and crushers—you can set priorities to influence scheduling. For instance, apply a negative priority to stockpile movements so the schedule prefers direct pit-to-crusher movements unless those become bottlenecked.

What you configure in the flow

Beyond nodes and movements, the diagram supports additional configuration:

• Rehandle groups — Group movements from stockpiles or staged stockpiles for physical rehandling by loaders or conveyors.

• Objectives — Apply quality or quantity targets to movements to guide the optimiser.

• Calendar overrides — Adjust stack or reclaim rates per period for stockpiles and dumps.

Node types

Type	Description
Pits	The source of material to be mined. ·After adding pits, you can associate each activity area with one. You enable which materials can leave each pit. If you change enabled materials, XECUTE re-reserves affected activity areas in that pit.
Stockpiles	A weighted average storage location. You can define its capacity, stack and reclaim rates, and inventory reconciliation.
Staged stockpiles	A stockpile with one or more piles that can each “build” or “deplete”. You can enable optional LIFO parcel tracking, build targets, and pile state logic. Use this to reflect real world ROM, product, or port stockpile behaviour.
Dumps	A waste destination. Optionally import dump solids to visualise fill order and to use solid slice centroids for haulage destinations.
Processes	A processing step (e.g., crusher, wash plant feed splitter) that can split and transform flow. Sub process nodes are supported.
Define wash plant tables	A specialised process node that appears when wash plants are enabled in Site management.
Products	A final destination representing saleable output.
Group	A container that shares inbound and outbound movements among its child nodes to simplify complex diagrams. You can’t group pits, products, groups, or processes that already host sub processes. Grouping is powerful but destructive to node level arrows (the group inherits and controls movements). There’s no undo, so consider cloning the site before large grouping edits.

Build a barebones flow

1. Add nodes

   Start with at least one Pit, destinations (Product and Dump), and optional intermediate Stockpile or Process nodes.

2. Create movements

   From a node’s green border, drag to the destination to create an arrow. XECUTE names the movement from source > destination automatically.

3. Enable materials

   On each arrow, tick which materials are allowed to travel that path.

4. Set capacities and inventories

   For stockpiles/dumps, enter a capacity and add a reconciliation point that is on or before the schedule start. For early testing, set generous capacities to ensure a feasible solution; reduce to realistic values once it runs.

5. Decide haulage per arrow

   Choose Modelled (uses HAULSIM routes), Fixed, No haulage, or a fallback travel time if no route is found; you can also drive fixed time with an expression.

6. Validate

7. Look for any red nodes/arrows and correct the configuration.

Working with movements (arrows)

A movement is where you control material eligibility, preferences, and haulage calculation.

• Materials: The arrow inherits candidate materials from the source node. Select which ones are enabled to flow.

• Haulage method: Choose:

  • Modelled: uses the imported HAULSIM model and named locations to compute travel time, including loading, spotting, and dumping components.

  • Fixed haulage: enter a constant time or expression (minutes).

  • Travel Time If No Route Found: the fallback value/expression if the model can’t find a route.

  • No haulage: skips travel time calculations for that link.

Example

For a Pit > Crusher arrow, choose Modelled haulage so the engine queries the haulage service for cycle times along actual routes. For Stockpile > Crusher rehandle, you might choose Fixed haulage if it’s a short, consistent travel.

Capacities and inventory

Capacities cap total material stored at nodes like stockpiles or dumps; inventories seed opening balances for qualities and tonnes. The optimiser needs these constraints to find feasible plans, especially when processes are rate limited.

• Capacity: Typically a Mass limit (but any Sum type accumulation field can be used). Start large to avoid infeasibility during initial model build; then dial down.

• Inventory reconciliation: Add manual checkpoints with measured date/time and values per principal field or ingest them via Data Feed In. The checkpoint time must be on or before the schedule start. Manual records take precedence over Data Feed In if they share the same timestamp.

• Dumps with solids: When you import dump solids, capacity is derived from the solids and inventory records aren’t used; haulage destinations become the dump slice centroids for better realism.

• Staged stockpiles: Piles maintain independent inventories and states (Building/Depleting). LIFO parcels (optional) track parcels with index/name and per parcel qualities and tonnes. Data Feed In can seed parcel inventories.

Haulage in the flow

When arrows use Modelled haulage, travel times are computed by the haulage service (HAULSIM engine), considering spot, load, and dump components and the nominal truck payload. You can also apply Dump Time Penalty on stockpile/dump/staged stockpile nodes to add a node specific time component on top of site defaults. For multi domain sites, map Named Locations per spatial domain so haulage knows which plant or stockyard location corresponds to a node.

Visual controls, selection, and layout

• Create or copy nodes: Drag from the palette to create. Ctrl + left drag a node to duplicate it; the copy is suffixed with “n”.

• Select: Ctrl/Shift + right click to select nodes; or left drag to box select. The selection box has a context menu to delete or group the selection.

• Colour and shape: Change node accent colour to visually classify parts of the flow (for example, mine vs ROM vs product nodes). Reset anytime.

• Control icons: Use the left hand toolbar to delete, zoom, open the Calendar override overview, and toggle Material, Rehandle Group, and Objective filters.

Material flow filter

Highlight one or more materials to see exactly where they can and can’t travel. Arrows with all selected materials enabled show bold; those with none dim. Click bold arrows to disable the selected materials for that movement, or click non bold candidates to enable. If you disable all materials on an arrow, it turns red to indicate an invalid movement.