Signal Charlie

From the FSF Basic Guide to Human Factors, a quick recap on development of CRM…

“CRM has been used with in the aviation industry for more than 20 years undergoing several evolutions.
1st evolution: emphasized changing individual styles and correcting deficiencies in individual behavior with a heavy focus on psychological testing.
2nd evolution: represented a focus on cockpit group dynamics, was more modular, and dealt more with specific aviation concepts related to flight operations.
3rd evolution: came a broadening of scope, specifically, training began to take into account the characteristics of aviation systems in which crew must function and expanded to areas out side the cockpit (e.g., cabin crews, maintenance personnel),
4th evolution: came integrating and proceduralization.
5th evolution: represents an awareness that human error is inevitable and can provide a great deal of information (Bowers et al., 2001). “CRM is now being used as a way to try to manage these errors by focusing on training teamwork skills that will promote (a) error avoidance, (b) early detection of errors, (c) minimization of consequences resulting from CRM errors. Programs are beginning to go beyond error management to include a focus on threat recognition and management. (Bowers et al., 2001, p. 642).”

FSF Basic Guide to HF developed by Curt Lewis (no relation) and Sylvia Hughes.

Threat and Error Management is the latest generation. There are also some interestng comments on perception, memory and mental models. New systems will need to consider not only shared mental models of humans, but also the interface with the next advancements in automation.