NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Joe Selan from MINING
MR. LeGRANDE: Moving right along, Joe Selan from Advanced Ergonomics will present the summary of the Mining Workshop. Joe.
MR. SELAN: Good afternoon to everybody.
First of all, I'm envious of Ira that he was able to put together a slide presentation in such short order. I was going to try to bluff my way through this, saying that we did have slides of underground mining; "it's just real dark down there."
In the Mining breakout session we had three speakers, Tim Martin described the ergonomics program at American Electric Power, AEP; Dan Anderson described the ergonomics program at Consol, Inc.; and I described two case studies from clients of mine, Island Creek Coal and Cypress AMAX.
Certainly the mining industry is a varied industry; there's surface mining, there's hard rock mining -- all of these ergonomic programs that we discussed in our session happened to be underground coal mining. So it was limited in scope, to a certain degree; but when we're talking about what are the physical stresses associated with underground mining, there was certainly agreement across all of the different speakers and all the different case studies that were brought out.
Underground mining is characterized by number one, extremely high strength requirements, ranging all the way from, at the low end, mind you, 50 pound bags of cement all the way up to high end, where you can be handling literally 200, 300 pound timbers, rails, sections of pipe, et cetera. So very high strength requirements.
Very intense endurance requirements, although these tend to be short duration. Shoveling activities, timber carrying activities. Very stressful postures. Low coal mines can have seam heights anywhere from -- the operational definition of low coal is 48 inches or lower. One of the analogies that was given, in order to get an appreciation of low coal mining, crawl underneath your kitchen table and try to lift a 50 pound bag. You get an appreciation of the postural issues associated with this environment.
Finally, the environmental issues, things ranging from extreme cold temperatures, extremely hot temperatures, and of course vibration, typically whole body vibration, associated with the vehicles that are being used underground.
So there was a commonality in terms of the identified ergonomic stressors in the underground mining industry. For three of the case studies, that being AEP, Consol and Island Creek, there was also significant commonality in terms of the approach taken to solve these problems. For all three of these particular companies, the approach was to develop ergonomic teams or ergonomic committees who would then be mandated or tasked to identify ergonomic issues and come up with control strategies for these ergonomic issues.
Some of the common bullets or some of the significant bullets that came out of this was, number one, the need for upper management support -- and I'm certain I'm preaching to the choir when I say that, but it was certainly going to be the doom of an ergonomics committee if there wasn't upper management support in terms of financial commitment, training commitment for the ergonomics committees, et cetera.
There is also an agreement that employee involvement was something that was critical for the success of any of these ergonomic programs.
Then finally there was a significant agreement with regard to the need for communication. Number one, there is a need to share ideas, and ergonomic committees represent a means whereby the sharing of ideas can occur so you're not having the wheel reinvented at each and every mine site. And also, the communication serves to avoid different committees floundering in terms of not being able to solve problems, being able to communicate with other sites which may be able to assist them in this area.
One of the very interesting things that we found for AEP, Consol, Island Creek -- for the engineering controls that were developed by these ergonomic committees at these different mining companies, they were virtually identical ergonomic controls that were developed by these companies, in terms of reducing bag weights, in terms of working with suppliers to provide lighter weight materials, the installation of mechanical assists, the use of aluminum shovels to reduce the overall weights in terms of shoveling activities.
Really the interesting and I think the very potentially fortuitous thing is that one of the problems that we see with the underground mining industry is a mind set that each and every mine is so unique that there isn't a common set of solutions. I think the three papers that we had in our morning session really flies in the face of this mind set and shows that there are a common set of ergonomic solutions that are out there, or really the issue comes down to how do we communicate to all of these other mines the benefits associated with ergonomics and the common issues and the common solutions that we have out there.
For all three of the case studies that I've spoken of to date, all of them were able to demonstrate very, very impressive cost reductions in terms of injury reductions, productivity improvements, et cetera. I probably threw the one curve into the session that we had with the mining industry in speaking of Cypress AMAX, in that Cypress AMAX is taking a slightly different approach; they're emphasizing, at least short term, physical ability testing, if you will, the flip side of the classic definition of ergonomics rather than the designing the work environment to accommodate everybody, Cypress AMAX is taking a long, hard look at "let us select people based on the physical requirements of the work."
And I certainly don't want to start any arguments in terms of the philosophy associated with this, but once again in terms of the benefits associated with the program, even though it's very much at a pilot stage, it does appear to have benefits associated with employee selection, and making certain that the people that you're hiring to do the job are in fact physically qualified to perform the work.
So that's a brief summary of the underground mining environment and the three papers that were presented this morning, a very enthusiastic crowd; we all left there much happier than when we walked in. And I'll turn it back over to you, David.
MR. LeGRANDE: Okay, thank you, Joe.
