Team Make-Up and Work Allocation at N.V. Kempense Steenkolenmijnen

Abstract

The allocation of miners to teams, and of teams to production faces, is complicated by the high degree of absenteeism of miners in Belgium. Therefore, the exact knowledge of who is actually present at the beginning of a shift and of the exact skills of those present, enables the foremen and mine captains to constitute their teams before all men go down into the mine in the most effective way possible.This paper describes the system of attendance recording and of displays which the foremen use to constitute their teams and/or to interrogate the personnel data base in order to do so. It shows how the foremen dialogue with the computer, to change the function of a miner within a team, to another team, or the function of a team as a whole.The implementation of the system, data bases, and data communication equipment and procedures, is described. The benefits obtained are presented for each level of the company: foremen and team supervisors, engineers, mine management.