A new approach for human factors integration into design for maintenance: a case study in the aviation industry

In the aviation maintenance industry, human factors/ergonomics (HFE) is increasingly considered by maintainability stakeholders in the aircraft development process. However, most of the stakeholders are not specialised in HFE, therefore the compromise between HFE and design criteria is not optimised. This paper has three main objectives. The first is to explain the limits already observed about integrating HFE into engineering design and design for maintenance. Based on this state, the second objective is to detail the design of a new approach called preliminary ergonomics analysis in maintainability (PEAM) to enhance integration of HFE in aviation maintenance by maintainability stakeholders with little or no HFE skills or knowledge. The last objective will present the results on the effectiveness of the PEAM implementation, comparing the situation before and after PEAM integration. Results show that the HFE is more efficiently integrated, with improvement in the simulation tools used.