Design for Effective Maintenance: Safety Data Provide Important Directions

Portions of the Naval Safety Center Accident and Mishap Data Base were examined for directions as to how Safety data can be used to generate principles of human factors design for the maintainer. Sixty-six objective variables plus narrative data from 5886 mishap cases were subjected to analysis. A non-parametric case selection model was developed, resulting in close examination of three specific clusters of similar cases. For each, design improvement directions were clearly indicated, and the methodology used to select them is extensible to other real-world data bases.