ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to pull together the various strands of this book by focusing upon the management of error management. Unless you manage error effectively, error will manage you1-and this is especially true of maintenance organizations in which the activities (as indicated at the outset) possess an unusually large number of error-provoking features. The costs of failure are enormous. In Chapter 1, we listed several major accidents in which maintenance failures were a major contributor. Regardless of these catastrophic possibilities, however, many maintenance organizations haemorrhage vast sums of money annually as the result of poorly managed errors. Even if disasters seem a remote possibility, easing the severe pain in the bottom line must surely be a powerful incentive to get the management of error right.
