Designing Ergonomic, Safe, and Attractive Mining Workplaces

The mining industry has experienced important improvements with regard to its safety record and work environment. But there is still room for further improvement and the mining industry now faces the challenge of securing a future workforce: The current workforce is aging, and mining work increasingly requires a more qualified workforce. Designing Ergonomic, Safe, and Attractive Mining Workplaces seeks to give an understanding of what must be considered in the design of mining workplaces. By reviewing and discussing the historic and current development of the mining industry as well as problems related to the safety, ergonomics, and attractiveness of mining workplaces, it demonstrates that the challenges facing the mining industry often need to be solved on a case-to-case basis.

The processes through which these issues are managed are of significant importance. To facilitate a proactive approach, the book covers the principles of systematic work environment management, together with examples of methods for risk management and work environment monitoring. It introduces a systematic and iterative design and planning method for the mining industry. This method acknowledges that all relevant stakeholders must be able to influence the design of ergonomic, safe, and attractive mining workplaces.

Features

• Takes a holistic and sociotechnical approach to current and future problems of the mining industry, which normally are dealt with in isolation or through technology
• Reviews historic, current, and future issues in the mining industry with regards to workplace attractiveness, health, safety, mechanization, automation, and work organization
• Provides several examples of these issues and attempts to address them (successfully and unsuccessfully)
• Covers the principles of systematic work environment management together with examples of methods for risk management and work environment monitoring for pro-actively dealing with work environment issues
• Introduces a systematic and iterative design and planning method for the mining industry that aims to avoid problems of traditional planning approaches and increase stakeholder and employee participation

Joel Lööw is a Ph.D.-student in Human Work Science at Luleå University of Technology. He has a MSc. in Industrial Design Engineering with a specialization in Production Design from the same university. His research interests are centered on work environmental issues in the mining industry. He is especially interested in the interplay between human, technology and organization. He has experience from the European Union project Innovative Technologies and Concepts for the Intelligent Deep Mine of the Future (I2Mine) and is currently involved in a mine accident prevention research project. In addition to this, he teaches a course on workplace analysis for MSc. engineering students and have previously taught mining engineering student on the subject of health and safety. Lööw has several publications on the subject of mining and human, technology and organization.

Bo Johansson is an Assistant Professor in Human Work Science at the Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences. Sweden. His research is mainly in the field of work environment management, work environment and industrial production development in mining and manufacturing business. He has an MSc in Mining Engineering and a PhD in Human Work Sciences. He has previously worked as a Mining Engineer and Head of a Mine Planning Division at Boliden Minerals. At Luleå University of Technology he has been Director of studies and Programme coordinator. In 2007, he was awarded the Levi prize (a national work environment prize) by The Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers.

Eira Andersson is Associate Senior Lecture in Industrial Work Environment, Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences, at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. She has a MSc in Ergonomic Design and Production Engineering and a PhD in Human Work Science. Her research focuses on industrial relations, occupational health and safety, technology and gender issues in mining production. She has been engaged in several interactive R&D projects together with the Swedish mining industry as well as transnational collaborations; all aiming for attractive, safe and gender equal work places in mining. In 2013 the Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) awarded her for significant research contribution to the mining industry, characterized by innovation, sustainability and societal benefits.

Jan Johansson is Professor in Industrial Work Environment since 1994. He has a MSc. in Industrial Management and Engineering from Linköping University of Technology from 1975 and a Ph.D. in Human Work Sciences at Luleå University of Technology since 1986. In 1999 Johansson was appointed as Honorary Visiting Professor at the School of Industrial Relations and Organisational Behaviour, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Johansson has been a member or the Swedish Research Council (2001-2003) and the Swedish Research Councils Ethical Committee. He has also been Deputy Dean at Faculty of Technology and until recently he has been Head of department for Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences. Johansson’s main research interest is work organisation and attractive work places. Johansson has more then 200 publications.