ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on aviation and nuclear power generation because these two areas offer the best documented data on maintenance-related failures. In doing so, it presents some well documented examples from a range of hazardous technologies. A more fundamental remedy is for designers and manufacturers to recognize that the risk of a weak component failing due to lack of maintenance may now be considerably less than the risk of a healthy component being damaged or omitted during maintenance. In maintenance, any reduction in the largest single category of human error could have substantial benefits, both in lives and in costs. According to a Boeing analysis, maintenance and inspection failures ranked second only to controlled flight into terrain in the list of factors contributing to onboard fatalities, and caused the deaths of 1481 people in 47 accidents between 1982 and 1991.
