A new approach to strategic planning, the Life of Business Optimisation System (LOBOS) optimises production systems from the scale of stopes in a single mine to an entire business strategy consisting of multiple mines and products competing for capital and processing capacity. LOBOS has optimised cash flow for a wide variety of operations, including large metalliferous or coal mines and as an aid to high-level strategic business optimisation solution to multi-mine/processing/product complexes. This paper discusses the application of optimisation technology to strategic planning with an emphasis on project evaluation with examples on the application of LOBOS to a variety of recent projects._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Smith, M L, 2007. Life of business optimisation - the mathematical programming approach, in Proceedings Project Evaluation 2007, pp 139-146 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).