A open-pit-mining operational planning model was constructed from the view point of minimizing the mining and transportation cost. Based on the theory of swarm intelligence optimization, a method was proposed that uses a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to optimize the open-pit mining operation plan, and a search strategy with the core particle and double attractor was designed for particles in the calculation process. The optimal operation plan was calculated by using MATLAB software as a computation platform. A case study was performed by taking an open-pit iron mine as an engineering background. By comparing the optimization results of the PSO algorithm with the actual planning results and the calculated results of nonlinear programming, it is proved that the PSO algorithm is feasible and reliable for optimizing the open-pit mining operation plan.