There is increasing demand to optimise yield and increase capacity of crushing plants. Research in this area has resulted in the development of numerous optimisation tools, and recent research has shown that the quality aspects of production have great influence on the optimisation results. The quality and capacity of a product is influenced by several parameters, and in order to control all of these parameters it is necessary to use some sort of optimisation software. In this paper, a novel approach to analyse the parameters product capacity and quality is presented. As an example a cone crusher and a vertical shaft impact crusher (VSI) is simulated in a tertiary stage. The simulation shows how capacity and product quality for a range of products will be affected when a parameter is changed. The paper also shows how wear will affect product capacity and quality. (c) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.