Improving quality of maintenance through Simplified Technical English

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to address the maintenance errors caused by the lack of understanding of maintenance manuals. English is the official language of civil aviation and all relevant maintenance manuals are written in it, but – for 80 per cent of the global maintenance personnel who are using such manuals – English is not their native language. The majority of these users have knowledge of English that is rather limited and they are easily confused by complex sentences and by the number of meanings and synonyms that English words may have. Design/methodology/approach – Scientific analysis of the faulty maintenance tasks to determine the impact of the inability of maintenance personnel to correctly understand maintenance manual written in English. Findings – Analysis of the maintenance processes clearly shows that ineffective communication between system designers and maintenance personnel, through maintenance documentation, is a well-recognised contributor to the occurrence of a faulty maintenance task. Practical implications – Significant improvements in the direction of effective communication and improvement in a quality of maintenance could be achieved by applying Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100), the benefit of which on the quality of maintenance is presented in this paper. Originality/value – Unique consideration of the quality of maintenance, which is to see it as a function of the comprehension of maintenance manuals written in English.