Health Monitoring and Maintenance Systems
Written by Ronald Treusdell and Shade Sanford
The starter’s pistol has been fired in the race to capitalize on health monitoring and maintenance (HMM) systems, but far too many organizations are still stuck at the starting gate.
The concept of HMM isn’t new; it’s been around for more than a decade. The aerospace and defense industry envisioned using sensor technologies to monitor the health and performance of complex platforms and systems such as aircraft, vehicles, ships, weapons, equipment and IT systems. Effective HMM was seen as a way to improve platform safety and performance while reducing life cycle maintenance costs. However, experts have struggled to create an end-to-end HMM model that truly delivers on that promise.
Today, with multiple factors converging to favor the creation of HMM implementation strategies, agencies and companies are beginning to give HMM a well-deserved second look.
THE PERFECT HMM STORM
HMM systems have long been recognized for their ability to impart efficiency and overall cost savings. But with current defense spending realities, what used to be “nice to have” efficiency features have now become “must have,” as new government mandates and a decreased appetite for expensive new systems become the norm.
At the same time, networked battlefields now produce a vast increase in the amount of raw data to monitor. But with fewer analysts relative to the amounts of data produced, decision-makers are increasingly data rich, but information poor. Information gathering has fast outpaced actionable ways data can be put to use.
The missing link has long been intelligent software to run HMM. But today, technology enhancements in business analysis software that were not possible a short time ago have made HMM systems cheaper to produce, install and operate.
Together, these factors create the perfect conditions for HMM to finally deliver on the vision of its early backers.
THE ORIGINAL PROMISE OF HMM
The original concept of HMM envisioned a scenario such as a brigade of tanks moving from Kuwait to Baghdad in preparation for battle. As the tanks traveled, onboard HMM systems would transmit data to overhead satellites on fuel capacity, onboard ammunition levels, track pad wear, and other system health attributes such as engine oil viscosity and temperature.
As this data was transmitted, business process software would automatically monitor these systems and alert analysts based on predefined parameters. Analysts, freed from the monitoring and coordination portion of their duties, could focus on creating smarter automated rules that would most efficiently reorder supplies, schedule repairs and maintenance, and position individual tanks and units to perform the needed maintenance—resulting in limited or no readiness downtime. Long unattainable, this promise of HMM is just now becoming a reality and the Department of Defense is taking notice. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has mandated the use of HMM systems on all new equipment, and DoD is busy retrofitting older systems with newer HMM capabilities.
TRANSFORMING MOUNTAINS OF DATA INTO ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
A new broad benchmarking study conducted by a large aerospace and defense firm examined the current state of HMM and emerging best practices among industry and government. It broke HMM into six key components: sensors, transmission technologies, data warehousing, modeling and simulation, business intelligence and centers of excellence.
The study found that for HMM to work properly, sensor data must be reliably transmitted from a system platform, such as a tank or truck, to a central data warehouse, where the relevant data is analyzed through modeling and simulation. Then the data is further processed by business intelligence tools that can automate decision-making for maintenance and repair. Although no government or commercial organizations have yet mastered all of these tasks and integrated them into a unified HMM system, several industries are racing toward completing the breakthrough.
Out of HMM’s six components, sensors, transmission technologies and data warehousing are the farthest along, technologically. Aerospace and defense companies along with defense maintenance organizations are all helping to rapidly advance sensor transmission and data warehousing technology. Those technologies have matured to the point that collecting data from sensors is becoming increasingly seamless and routine.
Data modeling and simulation technologies, however, are just starting to mature. It’s these business intelligence and automated decision-making technologies that combine to unlock the real potential of HMM. By automating decision-making based on rules refined by analysts over time, huge amounts of data can quickly be processed into actionable information. That actionable intelligence provides the foundation for implementing cost-effective performance-based logistics—the ultimate payoff of HMM.
As these key technologies continue to develop, government agencies and organizations must quickly commit to strengthening and integrating all components of the HMM chain. The first step is bringing stakeholders together to plan for a long-term HMM strategy. From these strategy sessions an HMM center of excellence should be created to coordinate and direct all related activities. The center of excellence can then launch and direct HMM pilot projects to incorporate new technologies and expand HMM coverage over the necessary system platforms. The centers are especially useful for establishing partnerships with academic institutions to improve modeling and data analytics applications as well as other sensor technologies.
GETTING THERE FIRST
As battlefield data continues to pile up and defense budgets shrink, developing an efficient and cost-effective means to extract valuable actionable intelligence has become a top government priority. At the same time, advances in business process and intelligence software now make the original vision of HMM a reality and have ignited a race as innovative companies and agencies vie to be among the first to offer these transformative systems.
These visionary organizations have correctly calculated that increased attention to building and executing HMM strategic plans will result in their ability to offer customers significantly improved safety, reliable maintenance, and expanded availability and performance of platforms and systems, all at quantifiably lower fixed-rate costs.
These stronger, more efficient competitors who can offer their customers performance-based logistics support over a platform’s entire life cycle will push organizations that fail to invest in these areas from the market.
To the victor will go the ultimate spoils: the lion’s share of the emerging HMM market. ♦
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Ronald Treusdell is a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, a McLean, Va.-based strategy and technology consulting firm. Shade Sanford is a senior associate at Booz Allen Hamilton.