As the actual space in which maintenance personnel work on
failed units, maintenance space is an important factor of maintainability.
Maintainers operate in an environment where interference
between human and machine parts is a major concern.
Sufficient operating room must be reserved to avoid collisions
during the maintenance process. From the point of view of ergonomics,
the space reserved for maintenance activities influences
the operator's comfort and performance. Sufficient maintenance
space for maintainers must be reserved to ensure ease of operation,
safety, comfort, performance, and so on. Hence, layout design and
maintenance space assessment are very important in the product
design stage to improve maintainability and ergonomics.
The assessment of maintenance space is key in evaluating
maintainability and in ergonomic design. However, the literature
contains considerable discussions on methods for verifying maintenance
space by using expert experience and visual sense. These methods are qualitative and influenced by subjectivity