Patent ID: 7302397

Claim:
A method of collaboratively identifying, prioritizing, and resolving issues affecting a series of similar complex systems, the method being implemented over a computer network and comprising: assessing an impact of each of one or more issues affecting one or more systems in the series, the assessed impact of each issue having a quantitative value and including a combination of impacted human factors and impacted operations factors, wherein assessing an impact comprises assessing an impact including a combination of impacted human factors and impacted operations factors that each have an associated quantitative value, the value of the assessed impact being the sum of the values of the factors; receiving the issues for posting on a discussion-capable electronic media, the issues being received by a manufacturer of, or one of a plurality of customers in possession of, the affected one or more systems; receiving comments corresponding to the posted issues for posting on the electronic media after the respective posted issues, wherein for each issue, the issue and comments corresponding thereto are received by a manufacturer and one or more of a plurality of customers in possession of the affected one or more systems, or by a plurality of the customers, for collaboration with respect to the issue, and wherein one or more of the issues or comments corresponding to one or more of the issues includes the assessed impact of the respective one or more issues; accessing the electronic media by a committee including representatives of the manufacturer and one or more of the customers, the electronic media being accessed for the committee to identify action issues from the posted issues at least partially based on the posted comments corresponding thereto, and for the committee to thereafter prioritize the action issues, the committee identifying and prioritizing the action issues at least partially based on the assessed impact of the respective one or more issues; assigning an action issue by the committee to the manufacturer or one or more of the customers for conducting a resolution investigation thereon; receiving a resolution proposal for the assigned action issue resulting from the corresponding resolution investigation, the resolution proposal being accessible by the committee to evaluate the resolution proposal; and directing implementation of the resolution proposal for the evaluated action issue by the committee, directing implementation including the committee directing closure of the action issue upon completion of implementation of the resolution proposal, wherein the assigning an action issue, receiving a resolution proposal and directing implementation of the resolution proposal steps occur for each of a plurality of action issues at least partially based upon the priority determined by the committee.