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ASRS maintenance reports from 1996 through 2000 (n = 937) were subjected to posterior probability analysis to determine the probability of causal factors leading to a specific maintenance‐related event. Unintentional release of an unairworthy aircraft into revenue service was found to be the most frequent maintenance‐related event (40 per cent). The top three maintenance errors leading to such an event were improper documentation (33 per cent), improper installation (27 per cent), and sign‐off of work not performed (13 per cent). The probabilities of certain causal factors responsible for each of the maintenance errors were as follows: (a) For documentation errors – lack of awareness (22 per cent), poor procedures (15 per cent), and lack of training (4 per cent); (b) For improper installation – complacency (21 per cent), lack of awareness (21 per cent), and poor procedures (15 per cent); and (c) For sign‐off of work not performed – maintenance management (27 per cent), complacency (21 per cent), and poor procedures (14 per cent).

The aim of the paper is to present the impact of human errors in maintenance as found in the literature in order for practitioners to be aware of their impact and develop actions to mitigate their effect.

The paper systematically categorizes the published literature and then analyzes and reviews it methodically.

Human error in maintenance is a pressing problem.

A maintenance person plays an important role in the reliability of equipment. It is also a well‐known fact that a significantly large proportion of total human errors occur during the maintenance phase. Human error in maintenance is a subject which in the past has not been given the amount of attention that it deserves. This paper will be useful to people working in the area of maintenance engineering, as it presents a general review of literature published on maintenance errors in various sectors of industry.

The paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on the field in question and their classification according to industry. The paper will be useful to researchers, maintenance professionals and others concerned with maintenance to understand the importance of human error in maintenance.

This paper sets out to outline a human hazard analysis methodology as a tool for managing human error in aircraft maintenance, operations and production. The methodology developed has been used in a slightly modified form on Airbus aircraft programmes. This paper aims to outline a method for managing human error in the field of aircraft design, maintenance and operations. Undertaking the research was motivated by the fact that aviation incidents and accidents still show a high percentage of human‐factors events as key causal factors.

The methodology adopted takes traditional aspects of the aircraft design system safety process, particularly fault tree analysis, and couples them with a structured tabular notation called a human error modes and effects analysis (HEMEA). HEMEA provides data, obtained from domain knowledge, in‐service experience and known error modes, about likely human‐factors events that could cause critical failure modes identified in the fault tree analysis. In essence the fault tree identifies the failure modes, while the HEMEA shows what kind of human‐factors events could trigger the relevant failure.

The authors found that the methodology works very effectively, but that it is very dependent on locating the relevant expert judgement and domain knowledge..

The authors found that the methodology works very effectively, but that it is very dependent on locating the relevant expert judgement and domain knowledge. Using the method as a prototype, looking at aspects of a large aircraft fuel system, was very time‐consuming and the industry partner was concerned about the resource implications of implementing this process. Regarding future work, the researchers would like to explore how a knowledge management exercise might capture some of the domain knowledge to reduce the requirement for discursive, seminar‐type sessions with domain experts.

It was very clear that the sponsors and research partners in the aircraft industry were keen to use this method as part of the safety process. Airbus has used a modified form of the process on at least two programmes.

The authors are aware that the UK MOD uses fault tree analysis that includes human‐factors events. However, the researchers believe that the creation of the human error modes effects analysis is original. On the civil side of the aviation business this is the first time that human error issues have been included for systems other than the flightdeck. The research was clearly of major value to the UK Civil Aviation Authority and Airbus, who were the original sponsors.

Airline business management is set on airworthy strategy. Airline sustainability depends upon corporate-based airworthy strategy as airworthiness is the base to any airline business management and strategy. An airline can ensize its corporate sustainability if it has airworthiness strategy and risk management. The main condition to survive in the airline business is to maintain airworthiness with the fleet, maintenance and corporate-risk management. Aircraft maintenance technician (AMT) has a dual role in aircraft maintenance system as the source of failure in maintenance process via his volatility and unmanageable qualifications and secondly source of manager of maintain airworthiness of the aircrafts in airline. Situational awareness of managers about both limitations and qualifications of human factors is vital determinant to the decision-making process in aviation. Although continuously improving in related literature, one of the biggest weaknesses of the current methods of AMT error or performance is that the ability to model the reciprocal effects of the factors affecting the fault is limited. For this reason, this study aims to develop an analytic network process (ANP) model that takes into account the effects of mutual dependences among factors.

Firstly, with the help of experts and extensive literature, 67 factors that contributed to AMT error are identified and grouped. Then, the factors identified as eligible criteria and sub-criteria that contributed to the AMT errors are determined. In this study, the weights of identified criteria that have influence on AMT error try to determine by using ANP method. ANP is the common method to solve multi-criteria decision-making problems and is used to calculate priorities of factors. Criteria determined in this study are classified into three main clusters: “individual-related criteria”, “working environment-related criteria” and “organisational-related criteria”. These main clusters include 15 sub criteria such as communication, documentation (quality/updating/availability) and peer pressure.

The result of this study shows that time pressure, organisational culture, safety culture and supervision are the most important criteria that contributed to AMT error. Their weights are 0.207, 0.172, 0.102 and 0.094, respectively.

There are many difficulties and limitations in measuring the factors that have an influence on AMT errors. For this reason, the weights of criteria and sub-criteria necessary are determined using ANP, and in this manner, it is possible to make better decisions in this process as ANP is a multi-criteria decision-making technique that considers qualitative factors in decision-making problems. The factors’ taxonomy determined as a result of the expert opinions and the extensive literature and the ANP model developed taking into account the dependencies between the factors will contribute to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to review current literature analyzing human factors in maintenance, and areas in need of further research are suggested.

The review applies a novel framework for systematically categorizing human factors in maintenance into three major categories: human error/reliability calculation, workplace design/macro-ergonomics and human resource management. The framework further incorporates two well-known human factor frameworks, i.e., the Swiss Cheese model and the ergonomic domains framework.

Human factors in maintenance is a pressing problem. The framework yields important insights regarding the influence of human factors in maintenance decision making. By incorporating various approaches, a robust framework for analyzing human factors in maintenance is derived.

The framework assists decision makers and maintenance practitioners to evaluate the influence of human factors from different perspectives, e.g. human error, macro-ergonomics, work planning and human performance. Moreover, the review addresses an important subject in maintenance decision making more so in view of few human error reviews in maintenance literature.

Contemporary management and strategy mean optimization of ingredient factors such as human factors, systems, operations and equipment. With system approach in management and strategy, human risk factor as input has considerable potential to change results as airworthiness in aviation management. The managers of aviation business also optimize their functions to act safe while making contribution to development in triple of sustainability as economic development and its sustainability; social development and its sustainability; and environmental development and its sustainability. Corporate sustainability can be accomplished via supporting workforce which is the human risk factor. To support (empowerment) workforce, researchers should identify human risk or error factors which are important to this research. The purpose of this study is to suggest holistic framework for working environment system of aircraft maintenance technicians (AMTs) within two respects such as human performance (ergonomics) and corporate performance (sustainability). The secondary purpose of this system is to develop human risk taxonomy by determining the factors affecting both human and work by taking ergonomic aspects in aviation.

In this study, a taxonomy of human risk factors for AMTs is developed. These human factors divided into groups and subfactors are obtained from an extensive literature review and experts’ opinions in the field of human performance in aviation. Taxonomy developed will be useful to both sharing and using corporate sources in sustainable way.

Human risk factors can be considered or accepted as factors that cause human error. This may result in the optimum way to managing human risk factor via minimizing human-based error. Personality, hazardous attitudes, individual characteristics, physical/psychological condition of AMTs and corporate social responsibility factors are human-related risk variables in this study. The risks and error can be reduced by recognizing these factors and revealing their relation to ergonomic design.

The results of this study are intended to constitute a guide for managers to manage risk factors and to take corrective and preventive actions for their maintenance operations. It is believed that this study is highly important for the aviation sector in terms of raising awareness or providing awareness for similar practices. As taxonomy of the risk factors contributes to the managing human error, corrective actions related to these factors must be taken by managers.

The analysis of the optimal production and preventive maintenance with lockout/tagout planning problem for a manufacturing system is presented in this paper. The considered manufacturing system consists of two non-identical machines in passive redundancy producing one type of part. These machines are subject to random breakdowns and repairs. The purpose of this paper is to minimize production, inventory, backlog and maintenance costs over an infinite planning horizon; in addition, it aims to verify the influence of human reliability on the inventory levels for illustrating the importance of human error during the maintenance and lockout/tagout activities.

This paper is different compared to other research projects on preventive maintenance and lockout/tagout. The influence of human error on lockout/tagout as well as on preventive maintenance activities are presented in this paper. The preventive maintenance policy depends on the machine age. For the considered manufacturing system the optimality conditions are provided, and numerical methods are used to obtain machine age-dependent optimal control policies (production and preventive maintenance rates with lockout/tagout). Numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are presented to illustrate the usefulness of the proposed approach. The system capacity is described by a finite-state Markov chain.

The proposed model taking into account the preventive maintenance activities with lockout/tagout and human error jointly, instead of taking into account separately. It verifies the influence of human error during preventive maintenance and lockout/tagout activities on the optimal safety stock levels using an extension of the hedging point structure.

The model proposed in this paper might be extended to manufacturing systems, but a number of conditions must be met to make effective use of it.

The originality of this paper is to consider the preventive maintenance activities with lockout/tagout and human error simultaneously. The control policy is obtained in order to find the solution for the considered manufacturing system. This paper also brings a new vision on the importance of human reliability during preventive maintenance and lockout/tagout activities.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of human factor training in aircraft maintenance accident mitigation and aircraft safety in post COVID-19 aviation scenarios. The cause of aircraft accidents and details of three decades of selective aircraft maintenance accidents are analyzed to arrive to the significant aviation safety factor. The effect of COVID-19 pandemic and related technological applications to maintain high standards of safety and their applications in aircraft maintenance with respect to the view of human factors are discussed in details.

This paper details the overview of the human errors, error mitigation and need of human factor applications in aircraft maintenance industry for safe air travel. The criticality of aircraft maintenance in keeping aircraft in airworthy condition to provide safe air transportation without delay and to support airline economy is discussed in this study.

The cause of aircraft accidents and details of three decades of selective aircraft maintenance accidents are analyzed to arrive to the significant aviation safety factor. The effect of COVID-19 pandemic and related technological applications to maintain high standards of safety and their applications in aircraft maintenance with respect to the view of human factors are discussed in details. The route of error mitigation and need of high standard technological training with human factor knowledge, to aircraft maintenance students are analyzed in detail with the opportunity of percentages of error reduction.

This study bridges, gained knowledge for aircraft maintenance error mitigation, current accident rates and future training needs for safest air travel through high standard quality maintenance in aircraft and its systems.

The purpose of this paper is to address the maintenance errors caused by the lack of understanding of maintenance manuals. English is the official language of civil aviation and all relevant maintenance manuals are written in it, but – for 80 per cent of the global maintenance personnel who are using such manuals – English is not their native language. The majority of these users have knowledge of English that is rather limited and they are easily confused by complex sentences and by the number of meanings and synonyms that English words may have.

Scientific analysis of the faulty maintenance tasks to determine the impact of the inability of maintenance personnel to correctly understand maintenance manual written in English.

Analysis of the maintenance processes clearly shows that ineffective communication between system designers and maintenance personnel, through maintenance documentation, is a well-recognised contributor to the occurrence of a faulty maintenance task.

Significant improvements in the direction of effective communication and improvement in a quality of maintenance could be achieved by applying Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100), the benefit of which on the quality of maintenance is presented in this paper.

Unique consideration of the quality of maintenance, which is to see it as a function of the comprehension of maintenance manuals written in English.

The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review on human factors in aircraft maintenance and to analyze and synthesize the findings in the literature on human factors engineering in aircraft maintenance.

The review adopts a threefold approach: searching and collecting the scientific literature; sorting them on the basis of relevance and applications; and review of the scientific evidences. Broad areas of aircraft maintenance regulations are identified and each area was explored to study the level of scientific growth and publications. Notable theories, models and concepts are being summarized.

Application of human factor principles in aviation spread beyond the technical arena of man-machine interface. The discipline has created a great impact on aircraft design, operations and maintenance. Its applications have percolated into design of aircraft maintenance facilities, task cards and equipment. Human factor concepts are being used for maintenance resource management. The principles are applied to shape the safety behavior and culture in aviation maintenance workplace. Nevertheless, the review unfolds immense potential for future research.

Research outcomes of non-aviation studies are also reviewed and consolidated to extend the applications to the aviation industry.

This review would be a consolidated source of information confining to the physical aspect of human factors engineering in aircraft maintenance. It is intended to serve as a quick reference guide to the researchers and maintenance practitioners.

It brought out the benefits of adopting the principles of human factor engineering in aircraft maintenance. Application of human factor philosophy ensures enhanced safety in air transport, personal safety and well-being of maintenance personnel.

This is a unique review based on aircraft maintenance regulations that are baseline performance standards made mandatory by regulatory authorities. Therefore, the review has been considered to be made on aircraft maintenance regulatory requirements that surpass corporate or competitive strategies in aviation maintenance organization.