An Investigation of Current and Emerging Standards to Support a Framework for Prognostics and Health Management in Automatic Test Systems

Abstract

The complexity and widespread use of modern day electronics in today's weapon systems necessitates a robust state-of-the-art framework for the development and operation of automatic test systems (ATS). The Department of Defense (DOD) ATS Framework Working group is developing an information standards-based framework to support interoperability in modern ATS. The expectation is that such ATS will improve overall maintenance, availability, and safety of these weapon systems while also reducing the cost of ownership of the weapon systems and their support infrastructure. A key emerging aspect of this framework is prognostics and health management (PHM). PHM is a field of work concerned with the detection, assessment, and prediction of the health of a complex system. In this paper, we summarize the current state of the DOD ATS Framework and address the functional gaps related specifically to PHM. The intent is to use this as a starting point for defining a corresponding ATS Framework for PHM. To do this, we provide a mapping between the key elements of the current framework to the functional blocks of the Open Systems Architecture Condition Based Management (OSA-CBM) standard, identifying existing standards or standards under development, and providing recommendations for areas that need improvement.