History of Crew Resource Management
- In 1979 NASA made a workshop Resource Management on the flightdeck . The reason for the workshop were investigations of accidents in which the human factor was the primary cause for accidents. The main problems were failures of interpersonal communication, leadership and decision making.
- In 1981 United Airlines initiated Cockpit Resource Management. The main theme were psychologically factors. One result was, that many pilots were afraid about changing their personality.
- In the early 1990s, scientific studies about properties of human accompanying systems were started.
CRM today
Nowadays different people, quite often out of different cultures, work together in one team. Each culture has its subcultures with preconceived notions of values and behaviour. This also applies to hierarchically structured teams. Team members are always interdependent. Team behaviour can be trained.
Today, CRM can be found in many different areas.
For example:- Many areas of aviation (Civilian and Military)
- Shipping (Civilian and Military)
- Oil industrie, eg. oil rigs
- Power plants
- Hospitals etc.
What could be the future of CRM?
Crew Resource Management could grow up to a Company Resource Management. This is certainly a noble aim which can only be achieved by reaching every indivdual. Today it still seems to be utopian. Perhaps CRM will be replaced only by a fault management.
