In this case study, the medium-sized enterprise is looking for ways to achieve sustainable development. Following the Industry 4.0 trend could get the enterprise closer. The rate of information technology usage is very low in the enterprise. The enterprise’s problem is the long production of orders. The orders had to be rejected many times because the customer’s time limit could not be met. The major cause seems to be two environmentally insufficient and obsolete machines in the blast cleaning operation. These machines are replaced in the production by one new wheel blast machine. However, the production process must be redesigned and the layout changed to use this machine effectively. This redesign is difficult to verify and evaluate in the pilot plant experiment. Simulation is the most suitable tool to do it quickly and relatively easily. The ExtendSim simulation program creates a real production process model and then applies the redesign of this process in the model. The model must be thoroughly verified concerning the real production process to not distort the results. The result of the redesign of the production process is the reduction of the production duration by almost 50% and elimination of two environmentally insufficient and obsolete machines. Improved machine blast cleaning has also significantly reduced the utilization of blast cleaning. Spared capacities can be used for pre-production or otherwise for the profit-making of the enterprise. However, a new bottleneck appeared elsewhere in the production process by removing the previous one. The innovation passed through barriers, and Slovak small and medium enterprises started building sustainable development. The enterprise still must focus on further innovation, and more investment will be needed to achieve the final sustainable development goal.

Vibrations caused by blasting works have an impact not only on buildings but also the internal environment of the buildings. If these buildings are situated in the surroundings of quarries, the citizens can perceive these vibrations negatively. By applying an appropriate millisecond timing interval, it is possible to lower the intensity of vibrations to the levels that the citizens will not perceive as negative effects inside the buildings. The limit values for this vibration intensity have not been defined to date. For the protection of the building from the vibrations, normative values of the particle velocity and frequency were determined. Hygienic standards for the inhabitants of the housing were applied, which assessed the impact of the vibration on humans through the measurement of the vibration acceleration in the housing. In this article, the results of the research carried out in Trebejov Quarry are presented. The experimental blasts carried out in Trebejov Quarry proved that the reduction in the vibration intensity under the value 2 mm.s⁻¹ led to the satisfaction of the inhabitants.

Because of the international significance of Dobšiná Ice Cave (Slovakia), it is important to have proper data about the state, movement, or decrease of the ice in which various information about past environments can be preserved. Thus, the goal of the study is to find out which of the 3D scanners used here is the most suitable for long-term monitoring of ice changes. A comparison of the 3D point clouds acquired from laser scanners Leica C10 and Leica RTC360 and the mobile scanners GeoSLAM Zeb Horizon and the iPhone 14 Pro to reference clouds from photogrammetry or tacheometry is provided, and also the process of data acquisition and registration is described. To catch the differences in point clouds according to different types of ice, cross-sections of the vertical and layered ice wall, horizontal ice surface, and artificial ice tunnel are analysed. Some remarkable but also unwanted properties of 3D scanners have been concluded, and the best compromise for 3D scanning of this ice cave has been chosen. According to the diversity of ice types and different layers occurring in Dobšiná Ice Cave, results could be partially helpful in choosing a suitable measurement technology for ice in other caves worldwide.