Impact et facteurs clés de l'introduction d'équipements miniers innovants : le cas d'une mine souterraine

Abstract

The mining companies navigate in a cyclic economic environment influenced by market prices. Concurrent with this environment are rising expectations of society with regard to working conditions and safety of workers. It is thus a highly competitive environment that companies in this sector are facing. To remain competitive, one of the solutions that they favor is the acquisition of innovative equipments. However, the introduction of innovative equipments is not made without clashes. Several studies indeed demonstrated that the arrival of bigger, more powerful and more sophisticated equipments also produced negative effects. Among these, let us note the periods of adaptation longer than planned. Furthermore, these equipments are also in cause of numerous accidents and deaths, and it is the case on an international scale as well to mines from Quebec. In front of these reports of reserved successes, it appears fundamental to better understand the factors of success for the implementation of innovative mining equipments. In this thesis we propose an on depth study of this subject by a case study realized in an underground gold mine on the Abitibi-Témiscamingue territory. At first, our approach aims at measuring the impact of ten innovative projects on performance indicators on productivity and on occupational health and safety (OHS). Secondly, we propose the use of a decision aid tool, the dominance-based rough set approach, to identify the key factors favoring the implementation of these innovative equipments. Among the obtained results, two factors were identified as the most relevant on all the studied performance indicators, the level of skill required to operate the technology and the level of acceptance of the latter by the operators. In addition to these two factors, the quality of the seat and the experience of the operators were also identified as relevant to explain the results in OHS, while the level of standardization of the new equipment has proved relevant to explain those in productivity. Our work will help our industrial partner to target and prioritize its needs for that the implantation of innovative equipments causes henceforth an improvement in performance in productivity and in OHS. Although our results are limited to a case study, the innovative and rigorous approach which we propose to the scientific and industrial community is applicable to every underground mining company wishing to identify its own factors of success inherent to its own environment. Others limits and perspectives offering potential avenues of research end our thesis. As such, we propose additional performance indicators, such as the number of tons transported by trucks and also the severity of injuries. Furthermore, a similar study, but considering the accidents involving the employees of mining contractors, as well as the accidents arisen during repair or maintenance would add complementary and interesting knowledge on the subject developed in this thesis.

Date	25 Sept 2014
Original language	French
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Sylvie Nadeau (Supervisor) & Kazimierz Zaras (Co-supervisor)