TEM Applications

01/13/2021 | Comment

TEM has a long history in the aviation industry. While initially developed as LOSA’s primary measure, TEM has evolved into much more over the years.

 

Below are some typical applications of how TEM has evolved into other applications.

Performance Aide

TEM offers a heuristic for frontline workers to remain mindful of threats, errors, and undesired states and their effect on performance in an ever-changing and complex operational environment.

Incident/Accident Analysis

TEM is commonly used by investigators to parse and better understand the causes of aviation incidents and accidents. TEM has served as a sensemaking tool in many industry safety studies and accident reports produced by the NTSB and other transportation safety boards

Training

TEM training is designed to help frontline workers manage threats, errors, and undesired states with tools and techniques. The ICAO Annexes, which document the standards and recommended practices for the world’s aviation operators, require TEM training for pilots and other organizational stakeholders.

Enhance Safety Mindfulness

TEM offers a dependent performance measure for researchers who want a better understanding of the systemic, team, and individual influences on safety and efficiency, emphasizing how frontline workers display resilience when confronted with threats, errors, or undesired states.

Safety Management System (SMS) Diagnostic

Perhaps, TEM’s most salient application is when it serves as a measure to monitor performance in everyday operations. Using TEM in this manner drives the LOSA process and is what The LOSA Collaborative offers in its primary portfolio of services.

TEM Description

01/13/2021 | Comment

TEM serves as the primary measure for LOSA observation. Developed by members of The LOSA Collaborative in the late 1990s, TEM is a conceptual framework that suggests threats, errors, and undesired states are critical events that frontline workers must manage to maintain adequate safety and efficiency margins.

 

TEM’s fundamental premise relies on the notion that frontline workers can be better trained and supported to anticipate, detect, and recover from threats, errors, and undesired states.

While LOSA observation of TEM performance is comprehensive, the areas of focus can be viewed as three general categories: threats, errors and undesired states.

Threats

Observable events or errors that occur outside the influence of a frontline worker requiring immediate attention to manage safely. Examples of threats include frontline workers having to manage weather, aircraft malfunctions, challenging ATC clearances, or errors that come from other departments.

Errors

Observable frontline worker deviations from organizational or individual expectations or intentions. Examples of errors include making a wrong automation entry, not turning on a system for protection, missing a checklist item, or failing to brief a critical item.

Undesired States

Observable states induced by a frontline worker that exhibit an apparent reduction in safety margins. Examples of undesired states include speed, vertical, or lateral aircraft deviations with an increased potential for an incident or accident.