Drilling and blasting play vital roles in opencast mining. These operations not only affect the cost of production directly
but as well and significantly, the overall operational costs. This research was carried out to find a possible way of optimizing the
drilling and blasting operations in an open pit mine of Somair (Société des Mines de l’Air), in the Niger Republic. In order to optimize
the drilling operation, the time taken by two drilling machines to accomplish the same task was analyzed statistically