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If you were the CEO of a company that wasted over $80 million a year, injured numerous workers, and lost untold efficiency - and it was all preventable - wouldn't you be just a little concerned? The company I'm describing isn't fictitious - it's the U.S. Air Force - specifically USAF maintenance. It's the dilemma posed by the problem of living with preventable human error. Looking at USAF maintenance performance statistics over the last 10 years, 18 to 20 percent of all USAF aviation mishaps are attributed to preventable human error in aircraft maintenance - over $350 million in direct costs. In addition to the mishap statistics, there have been numerous fatalities, lost workday injuries, and lost efficiency - all of which are much harder to quantify but that are substantially higher than the direct costs.
Since World War II, accident and mishap rates have improved dramatically. Equipment is much more reliable (and expensive), and the root-cause analysis safety investigation process has done an admirable job of identifying procedural and organizational issues. The performance and fallibility of the average worker has not kept pace with these improvements. As a result, human factors issues continue to take an increasingly larger toll as an overall percentage of causal factors in mishaps. Over the last 15 years, the mishap and fatality rate in the military has leveled-off to a comparatively low, but consistent, rate. However, no preventable accident or fatality is acceptable. So the question becomes how do we reconcile the status quo with an effective initiative to target preventable human error? Phrased another way, from the safety perspective, how do we touch zero? The answer lies in taking a fundamental look at how we approach accomplishing our day-to-day jobs and how to insulate our workers from ever being put in a position where one mistake leads to an immediate and unrecoverable consequence. The answer to preventable human error is an initiative indistinctly titled "Maintenance Resource Management" or "MRM."
The goal of MRM is to balance the science of why people perform the...