Generating knowledge about the downtime of the machines in the example of mining enterprise

Increasing competition in the domestic and global markets causes companies to be more and more active in taking steps to obtain an advantage over competitors. The area, which is particularly important in building this advantage, is knowledge. Knowledge is the basic resource for every company, which if used properly, ensures development, growth and economic success. It very often happens that the companies are not fully aware of the knowledge potential they possess. Therefore, it is justified to take activities that will enable to discover this basic and, at the same time, key resource. In practice, it turns out that knowledge can not only be discovered and used but also generated through the appropriate technical means. The article presents an example of knowledge generating related to an identification of the reasons of breaks and interruptions during the machinery’s work in the Polish mining enterprise extracting coal. It turns out that one of the fundamental problems of mining companies is the ineffective use of machines and devices. For this reason, knowledge about the types and frequency of any kind of losses occurring during the work is essential. In this area, it is necessary to register failures, downtime and other unplanned negative events, and credibly identify the reasons of their occurrence. Knowledge gained in this process will be the basis to develop and take proper measures aimed at eliminating the losses and finally improving the effectiveness of the entire enterprise. Such generation and then practical use of knowledge create great opportunities to improve the financial condition of the entire mining industry. The presented methodology is based on using independent sources of information regarding the registration of the breaks during the studied machines’ work. This data is the basis for the application of the additional informatics tool, the aim of which is to identify the reasons of the breaks, so, in other words, to convert tacit knowledge owned by the dispatchers into explicit knowledge. The developed research methodology and the informatics tools lead to great possibilities of wide practical application other sectors of the economy as well.