Information and Communication Technology in the British Coal Industry—Systems Management and the Organisation and Reliability of Production and Maintenance Work

In the last ten years the British Coal Industry has introduced information and communication technology into the process of production in order to increase the reliability of its data collection, and to reorganise work and make it more flexible. In part this is to increase the machine operating time within machine available time by a speedier and more accurate identification of machine performance and likely breakdowns. This for example allows the reorganisation of both production and maintenance workers, and in particular the assessment and calculability of their availability in number, place, and time.