Both employees and employers will benefit from the new solutions. There are many areas where you can find real savings, as underground routes that are used to transport materials and transport crew in five mines belonging to the company counts more than 300 km. The effort employees put into getting to the site and time of delivery of materials to the underground workings are tangible money. Accidents also occur on transport roadways.
Modernization of transport system is currently our top priority in the technical area. This is one of the ways of improving the efficiency of work, but it's not just about cost efficiency, but also to improve the comfort and safety of the crew. Professionally trained and developed in details specific tasks, will allow us to carry out such a significant investment in less than two and a half years - highlights Jarosław Zagórowski, President of JSW.
Work on the modernization of underground transport started in 2008 by comparing transport systems used in various mines. It was decided to standardize them, recognizing that ultimately the JSW shall operate a maximum of two systems: diesel floor mounted rack and pinion railway and diesel suspended monorail rack and pinion drive, with a focus on the most extensive implementation of the latter.
Gradually the most dangerous and inefficient transport systems based on lines of rope were eliminated and replaced with diesel suspended monorail. In addition to the transportation of materials on the mine’s roadways they started to use containers on the wider scale, just as it had been done in mine "Budryk", which are produced in cooperation with Jastrzębskie Zakłady Remontowe which are part of JSW Group. At the turn of 2011/2012 740 of these were produced and in the nearest future it is planned to produce the next 895 containers.
Containers ensure smooth transport and so we can skip extremely time-consuming reloading materials, and less frequently the materials are handled, the less accidents take place. - Notices Michał Kapała, chief engineer at JSW SA mining team.
Together with the modernization of the underground transport, the number of accidents related to the transportation of materials and people in JSW started to fall - with more than 30 per year between 2008 and 2009 to 23 in 2010 and 19 in 2011 to mid-2012, there were 7 accidents related to transportation.
Modern system solutions for the mine that is expanding, became a strategically important issue. In 2009, the length of the routes of all transport systems in the mines of JSW was about 292 km, and two years later increased to 323 km. At the same time the length of diesel suspended monorail increased by 63 km and 38 km of routes with rope suspended rails disappeared. Number of tractors, diesel self-propelled railway increased by 32 pieces - from 52 in 2009 to 84 in the first quarter of 2012.
The introduction of transport systems based on diesel railway allows to use the route, if properly adapted to carry people, so you have direct access to the area for work. Most routes suitable to drive people is in mine - "Borynia-Zofiówka" - Borynia Site - 8.9 km and mine "Budryk" 11.6 km. These mines have the most developed transport system of transport by diesel suspended monorail in the mines of JSW.
With the introduction of diesel suspended monorail and the container traffic, by 2015 jobs related to underground transportation should be reduced across the JSW with about 540 employees per day. Project costs are estimated at over 219 million, while the end of 2011 JSW spent for this purpose more than 62 million.
