An Assessment of Selected Work Organisation Variants in an Underground Hard Coal Mine with Consideration to Unit Mining Costs

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to compare two forms of work organisation, the first of which assumes extending the mine’s operation from
five to six days a week, and the other – implementing a continuous work organisation system. To illustrate this in terms of unit
mining costs, a model hard coal mine was used. In addition to the current organisational solution, which serves as the starting
point for comparative analysis, solutions were proposed to increase the degree of utilisation of the existing production potential,
mainly with regard to technical means of production and human resources. The proposed solutions assume increasing the intensity
of use of technical means of production on an annual basis by extending the annual working time of selected mining crews. For the
comparative analysis, three variants of the mine’s operation in terms of the production organisation system were adopted. Under
Variant I, treated as the baseline option, the current organisation of production is to be continued (5 days a week, Monday to Friday,
excluding public holidays). Variant II provides for extending the working time of some mining crews to 6 days a week (from
Monday to Saturday, excluding public holidays). Variant III assumes continuous operation for 7 days a week (excluding public
holidays and several days for shaft inspections). Having adopted appropriate baseline assumptions for simulation calculations and
a set of input data reflecting the characteristics of a specific mine, simulation calculations were performed and their results were
used to carry out a comparative analysis of selected organisational solutions.