Selection Strategy for Identification of Process Measures for Surveillance in Aviation Kunal Kapoor, Nikhil Iyengar, Pallavi Dharwada, Joel S. Greenstein, and Anand K. Gramopadhye Human Computer Systems Laboratory Department of Industrial Engineering Clemson University Clemson, SC 29634 Abstract Inspection and maintenance errors that occur in aircraft maintenance systems have a formidable impact on the safety and reliability of air transportation. Evaluation of the aircraft maintenance system requires an analysis of the maintenance processes in use. The systematic evaluation of data collected on the aviation maintenance process can provide management with feedback on the performance of the airline and consequently provide proactive support of the decision-making process prior to the dispatch of the aircraft. Recognizing that surveillance, auditing and airworthiness directives form a significant portion of the quality assurance function of an airline, it is critical that data be collected on these processes. Significant efforts have been made to investigate and track inspection and maintenance errors. Although valuable in terms of their contributions to the identification of the performance- shaping factors that lead to maintenance errors, these efforts have tended to be reactive in nature. Surveillance has a more practical bearing on the maintenance of aircraft. Process measures for surveillance was identified by the research team based on human-factor principles, utility of data being captured, and working around mental models of quality assurance personnel. This research establishes the identification strategy the research team adopted to finalize the process measures for surveillance. Keywords Surveillance, Aviation maintenance, Selection strategy, WebSAT, Process measures 1. Introduction The mission of the FAA is to provide safe and reliable air transportation and to ensure airworthiness of the aircraft. The increasing number of maintenance and inspection errors in the aviation industry has motivated the need for human factors research. Maintenance error has been found to be a crucial factor in aircraft accidents [2]. Human factors research in maintenance has deemed the human as the central part of the aviation system [7]. The emphasis on the human and his role in aviation systems results in the development of error tolerant systems. Such systems will be efficient if they closely monitor and evaluate aircraft maintenance and inspection activities. Air transportation is becoming continually complex. The significance of the maintenance function was captured by Weick et al. [22] when they observed that: “Maintenance people come into contact with the largest number of failures, at earlier stages of development, and have an ongoing sense of the vulnerabilities in the technology, sloppiness in the operations, gaps in the procedures, and sequences by which one error triggers another” [22]. Given the ever increasing complexity of an aircraft, a significant proportion of these errors come at the hands of the maintenance personnel themselves due to greater demands on these individuals. Thus, it is very important to take a closer look at the humans involved in aviation maintenance, understand the causal factors for these errors and the possible solutions to counter this situation. The aviation maintenance industry has also invested a significant effort in developing methodologies for investigating maintenance errors. The literature on human error has its foundations in early studies of errors made by pilots [5], work following the Three Mile Island incident, recent work in human reliability and the development of error taxonomies [20, 14, 19, 17, 18]. This research has centered on analyzing maintenance accidents. Figures emerging from the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) show a steady rise in the number of maintenance error mandatory occurrence reports over the period 1990 to 2000 [3]. A recent Boeing study of worldwide commercial jet aircraft accidents over that same period shows a significant increase in the rate of