Maintenance human factors sometimes is discussed as if the concept is radically new. Three generations ago, in the late 1940s, it was recognized that it was a designer’s obligation to eliminate the potential for misassembly in his or her designs. ”If anything can go wrong, it will” — the so-called Murphy’s Law — is not a pessimistic statement but a long-established design law. It is said to have been devised after the misassembly of instrumentation on a rocket sled being used for aeromedical tests on a California lake bed.1
Two generations ago, in 1964, the U.K. Accidents Investigation Branch (now the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch [AAIB]) commented that “faulty maintenance” was rare, but expressed concern over designs that did not consider Murphy’s Law and could allow misassembly.2
One generation ago, at the start of the 1990s, attention increasingly moved from designers to maintainers and a wider range of possible maintenance failure…
