A LIFECYCLE-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR EMBEDDING TRUSTWORTHINESS IN MAINTENANCE PLANNING DECISION-SUPPORT SYSTEMS

Human centricity is increasingly recognised as essential for the effective adoption of intelligent and digitally enabled maintenance systems, making trustworthiness a critical requirement for maintenance decision support. These systems are intended to support human judgment by providing aggregated information, prioritised recommendations, and scenario exploration capabilities. However, existing research often addresses trust either at the algorithmic level or at the user perception level. This often overlooks the Human-System Interaction (HSI) processes through which trustworthiness is actually established, maintained, and validated. HSI bridges the gap between the technical reliability of a system and the human confidence required for its operation. To address this gap, this paper proposes a lifecycle-based framework for embedding trustworthiness into maintenance planning decision-support systems (DSS) through HSI considerations. The framework conceptualises trustworthiness as a socio-technical system property and systematically links trustworthiness attributes, such as transparency, traceability, predictability, and accountability, to system lifecycle phases, from requirements definition and design to validation and operation. Rather than treating trust as a post-deployment concern, the framework supports proactive integration of trustworthiness during system development. The framework is instantiated using a maintenance planning DSS to illustrate its applicability at the planning level. The proposed approach contributes structured guidance for designing trustworthy, interpretable, and human-centred maintenance planning systems.

Keywords: Maintenance planning, Decision-support systems, Trustworthiness, Human-system interaction, Lifecycle engineering, Human-centric maintenance.