A Synoptic Panorama of Psychology Based System Maintainability and Design

Abstract

The challenges of global market continue to inspire companies to consider all prominent attributes of system/product including maintainability to develop reliable, safe, maintainable and novel systems/products. Moreover, system/product maintainability involves human beings in almost all important maintainability affecting activities like design, maintenance, operation and support. Thus, maintainability of the product/system does depend on the performance and psychological orientations of human beings involved in these activities. The paper reviews the published literature and extends it further in the context of system maintainability. With the purpose of signifying the role of psychology of personnel on system’s maintainability, the psychological perspectives on planning, organization and design for maintainability have been presented in this paper. This paper presents a framework to incorporate the prominent aspect of human psychology in the maintainability and design of systems. The paper highlights a new orientation in the total design of systems, in general, and mechanical systems, in particular. Limitation and future scope associated with this paper are mentioned in the last section.