Optimal Open Pit Mining Equipment Selection Using Fuzzy Multiple Attribute Decision Making Approach

Equipment selection in mining engineering is one of the most important decision that is affected the mine design, production planning and economic parameters in open pit mining. Mine planning engineers generally use of their intuition and experiences in decision making even though equipment selection is a complex multi criteria decision problem. In real-world situation, because of incomplete or non-obtainable information, the data (attributes) are often not so deterministic; therefore they usually are fuzzy-imprecise. Combination of Analytical Hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy method applied to calculate global weights of the attributes. The weights then passed to the Technique for Order Preference Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method that the most efficient mining equipment alternative(s) could be appointed through distance measurement so that the best alternative has the nearest (distance) to the ideal solution and farthest from the negative-ideal solution in fuzzy environment. This approach is applied to select optimal loading-haulage equipment in Sungun open pit mine of Iran.