New SAE Release: JA6268 Recommended Practice: “Design & Run-Time Information Exchange for Health-Ready Components” was published by SAE on April 2, 2018.  This document is designed to help reduce existing barriers to the successful implementation of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) technology into the aerospace and automotive sectors by introducing “health-ready components.”

What is a Health-Ready Component? Health-ready components are supplier-provided components or subsystems which have been augmented to monitor and report their own health or, alternatively, those where the supplier provides the integrator sufficient information to accurately assess the component’s health via a higher-level system already on the vehicle. This is key to unlocking the potential of IVHM!

Why is this document important? The principal motivation behind JA6268 is to facilitate the integration of the IVHM functionality in supplier-provided components to meet the needs and objectives of vehicle OEMs, end users, and government regulators in a cost-effective manner. Underlying this motivation is the assumption that market forces will drive the need to achieve industry wide application of IVHM technology across the aerospace and automotive sectors, which will in turn drive new health-ready requirements that suppliers must ultimately meet.  Accordingly, the recommended practices contained in JA6268 have two primary objectives: (1) to encourage the introduction of a much greater degree of IVHM functionality in future vehicles at a much lower cost, and (2) to address legitimate intellectual property concerns by providing recommended IVHM design-time and run-time data specification and information exchange alternatives.

Why is industry awareness important? IVHM technology has the potential to provide significant business benefits in terms of performance, availability, and safety. To date, the level of deployment in aerospace and automotive domains has been limited with respect to higher end functionality such as predictive analytics or prognostics. One of the key barriers is the lack of uniform information sharing methods between OEMs and their suppliers. Thus, there is a window of opportunity to move proactively to accelerate IVHM implementations and avoid unnecessary proliferation of different approaches which would be costly and counterproductive. JA6268 is a recommended practice designed to capture this opportunity now. The SAE HM-1 committee is in the process of establishing a consortium of OEMs and suppliers, the Health-Ready Components Supplier Group (HRC SG), to steer the JA6268 implementation path and positively impact IVHM industry-wide practices.

• Read More: April 5, 2018, Press Release
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"Health-Ready Components on the 787 are enhancing Fleet performance and enabling customer support efficiencies today. This initiative has great potential."
- Keith Sellers, 787 Fleet Chief, Boeing

"We really need better mechanisms like JA6268 to engage our supply base to bring IVHM into the mainstream."
- Frank Kramer, Technical Specialist, Airbus

"We believe that the most effective path to full implementation of IVHM/PHM technology must include robust best practices for exchanging design and performance information with our supplier partners."
- Barbara Leising, Director of Global Aftersales Diagnostics & Electrical Engineering, General Motors

"As a supplier of automotive electronics, I believe that IVHM technology will be critical to the ultimate success of autonomous vehicles and we look forward to further collaboration with the OEMs to advance that goal."
- Andre Kleyner, Global Reliability Engineering Leader, APTIV