The mining industry is facing a technological shift with Industry 4.0 creating new conditions for mining. This is often referred to as Mining 4.0. To succeed through the technological shift, the industry need to handle several challenges wisely, such as how to utilise the new digital technology to promote sustainable work environments, how to recruit skilled workers to the industry, and how to manage organisational challenges as a result of the technological shift. This scoping literature review examines a large field of literature on how Mining 4.0 might affect the mining industry in areas such as work environment, competences, organisation and society, and what can be done to promote sustainability going forward. The paper also identifies several areas that have not been explored in previous research. These include empirical studies on the effects of the technological shift brought about by Mining 4.0 on work environments, and how to attract younger generations to mining to ensure sustainability in the industry going forward.

Digitalization and automation technology offer new possibilities to increase productivity and obtain higher levels of autonomy in mining operations. Introducing autonomous systems into mining is not only a technical problem in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, nor a problem of safety in human-automation interactions. The systems also need to be designed and developed so that they foster healthy and attractive working environments. The design and development phase of new mining technology has not been extensively studied previously. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated technology developers’ basic assumptions about humans and their interactions with the technology they develop. We conducted five semi-structured workshops within an EU funded project concerned with developing digitalization and automation solutions for the mining industry. The data suggests that many critical functions will still be under human control in future mining systems. The results also indicate increased complexity in the interaction between autonomous systems and humans as the technology becomes more advanced. As a result, we suggest that a human perspective, based on sociotechnical principles, should not only be considered in implementing the technology at mines but also in the early conceptual phases of developing and designing the technology. This will ensure healthy and attractive work environments in the future mining industry.

Gruvindustrin står inför ett teknikskifte där digitalisering skapar nya förutsättningar för framtidens gruvproduktion (Lööw et al., 2019). Detta teknikskifte innebär en högre grad av autonoma system med ökad produktivitet till minskade kostnader (Horberry et al., 2016). Men, en mer autonom gruvdrift innebär inte att människan blir överflödig (Rogers et al., 2019). Någon måste fortfarande hantera underhåll, ge instruktioner och sätta igång dessa system, samt övervaka och ingripa om det uppstår problem eller avvikelser. Ju mer avancerade dessa autonoma system blir, desto mer tycks gränserna mellan det tekniska och det sociala systemet luckras upp. Denna riktning är inte helt oproblematisk. Vägen till en autonom gruva är lång och om människans behov, förutsättningar och begränsningar inte tas i beaktning är risken stor att interaktionen mellan människa och det tekniska systemet får en negativ inverkan på arbetet.