Integration of equipment design software into a comprehensive computerised mine planning system

Today's mine planning processes involve various computer applications for the different engineering disciplines. The development of these systems over the past 20 years was largely prompted by the requirements of certain engineering units in their daily work and led to very specific applications. The disadvantages of using a large number of limited systems are interrupted information flows and data redundancy, thus impairing the overall planning efficiency and quality. The planning and design of underground mining equipment is based upon elementary data from other fields such as surveying, production planning, ventilation etc; In addition, various data are created during the equipment planning process which have to be transferred to the electrical, management or maintenance department. This paper describes a modem planning and information system for underground mining equipment in terms of technical functionalities and data management. This system, called GRUBE-M, is used in the majority of German hard coal mines. The paper outlines a concept far high level data integration as a contribution to the improvement of the overall mine planning process.