Wieliczka Salt Mine – vertical transport migration

The challenge

Since 2018 the Wieliczka Salt Mine had been running an AMAGE system supporting vertical transport management — coordinating the work of the shaft department, defining transport tasks and settling transports. The system operated failure-free and practically maintenance-free, but it was a desktop installation: applications installed on users’ computers, and the growing technical debt of libraries and runtime environments limited the possibility of further development and keeping the system fully ready. The goal of the project was a migration to the latest, web-based version of the AMAGE Software Suite without losing data and without downtime in the department’s work.

Data

The Wieliczka Salt Mine — one of the oldest companies in Europe, still an active mining plant and one of the most visited sites in Poland. The project covered the shaft department organising the transport of materials for renovation, protection and tourist-traffic support works. A key requirement was compatibility with the existing hardware platform — industrial rugged mobile devices running Windows.

Solution and effects

The migration could not be a simple table transfer — years of platform evolution required exporting data from the old system and merge, split and enrichment operations so the data could be imported directly into the new web modules. The visual layer of the old system was replaced with existing AMAGE Web modules (transport, work orders, element structure) with small extensions for vertical-transport-specific data. New dashboards were built mirroring the old visualisations, dedicated reports were migrated and dedicated importers were launched (external companies’ work schedules, transports, current schedules). The mobile interface was recreated 1:1 against the old mAFx application — with the web application packaged in an Electron/JS shell for the rugged devices.

As a result:

• all historical data were migrated with the possibility of retrospective analysis of vertical transport
• backward compatibility of interfaces was preserved — employees moved to the new application without a break in their daily work
• a web AMAGE system was launched for the management staff: work orders, dashboard, transport module, quick addition of incidental transports
• a new mobile interface was launched on the existing rugged Windows devices (Electron/JS shell, instead of the local JavaFX application)
• the need to install and service software on workstations disappeared — administration on the IT department’s side became much simpler

Advantages for the participants

• Operational continuity — the migration was carried out without interruptions in the shaft department’s work.
• No installation on workstations — access via a browser for all authorised users.
• User habits preserved — the mobile interface 1:1 with the old application.
• Hardware investment maintained — the same rugged devices keep working with the new system.
• Easier monitoring and corrections on the producer’s side — a web application instead of an installed one.
• A platform ready for further development — removal of the old installation’s technical debt.

Components

Media