Mechanised sub-level stoping is one of the most widely accepted stoping
practices followed in base metal mines in India. As a general practice,
blast-scheduling of rings in these stopes is done either heuristically or
randomly which leads to a high fluctuation in ore grade when drawn and
delivered to the mill. In this paper, dynamic programming has been
investigated as an optimisation technique for optimal blast-scheduling of
rings. A microcomputer based dynamic programming algorithm has been
developed in C language which runs under the UNIX environment. A
case study based on Indian mine data is presented to demonstrate the
application of the dynamic programming concept and use of the
developed software. It is concluded that dynamic programming can be
used as a production planning tool in Indian mines practicing sub-level
stoping and following heuristic/random approaches for blast-scheduling
of rings.