Case study / 04
Rail & Bulk Supply Chain Modelling
Operational decision support
A body of simulation and capacity work spanning mine, rail, port, logistics, and infrastructure planning.
A discrete-event model follows material and fleet through mine or source, stockpile and loadout, the rail network, port or plant unloading, and the empty return cycle. Schedules, maintenance, delays, infrastructure, operating rules and fleet availability influence the entire cycle. Outputs include throughput, utilisation, queues, cycle times, bottlenecks and scenario comparisons.
01 / Operational question
The bottleneck moves
The capacity of a loadout, rail line or unloader does not predict the throughput of the whole operation. Fleet cycles, queues, train interactions, maintenance, stochastic delay and operating rules move the effective constraint from one part of the system to another.
The modelling task is to represent those dependencies at the level needed for a real planning decision, without burying the result in unnecessary detail.
02 / Model boundary
Follow the complete operating cycle
Discrete-event models follow material from mine or source through stockpile and loadout, across the rail network, into port or plant unloading, and then follow the empty fleet back into the next cycle.
Schedules, asset availability, maintenance windows, delay distributions, infrastructure limits and operating rules all change the same shared system state. That is what exposes queue formation, knock-on delay and constraints that isolated calculations miss.
- Calibrated process and travel times
- Explicit infrastructure, fleet and operating constraints
- Controlled scenario changes against a common baseline
03 / Decision outputs
Compare the operation, not just a headline tonnage
Scenario runs report throughput alongside cycle times, utilisation, queues and bottlenecks. Together, those measures explain why a result changed and help distinguish a local improvement from a constraint shifted elsewhere in the chain.
04 / Representative work
Rail and bulk systems across several operating contexts
Public examples include Mineral Resources iron ore, Bowen Rail, Roy Hill, CBG bauxite, BHP Billiton iron ore, Aurizon coal, Queensland Rail bulk freight and Hunter Valley coal operations.
The Roy Hill rail operations platform was delivered over ten weeks, with partial functionality available after five. It combined mine and port delays, train scheduling, maintenance closures, infrastructure options and operational reporting in one simulation environment.