A Model of the Competitive Advantage of Prognostics and Health Management

As enterprises learn of the emerging discipline of Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) they often desire a basic understanding of the key parameters that influence the competitive advantage to be gained over more basic application of the tenants of Reliability Centered Maintenance. This paper introduces a model-based systems engineering model that extends a classic expression used for determining optimal preventive maintenance period to illustrate the potential competitive advantage of PHM. This paper begins with a brief introduction of some foundational concepts. An established reliability-centered maintenance model is then used as a basis for translation into Systems Modeling Language (SysML). Selected elements are then extended to build a SysML expression of basic PHM concept elements. The extended SysML models identify the key attributes and provide a stereotype to quantify the advantage to be gained. The paper has three conclusions. First, as expected, compared to time-based maintenance, a prognostics and health management system can significantly improve the competitiveness of an enterprise. The extent of this benefit depends on the driving reliability functions; the services provided and supporting costs throughout the system life-cycle; understanding of system operation, system monitoring, and system health assessment; and the ability to take opportunistic advantage as events unfold. Second, given these dependencies, an enterprise must competently engineer PHM into its operations and services architectures to fully appreciate the advantage to be gained. Finally, the recent emergence of increasingly sophisticated model-based systems engineering methods are clearly applicable and should be highly sought by enterprises wishing to finesse a competitive advantage from PHM technologies.