Improved Electronics Maintenance through Tester Prognostics

Electronic systems undergo degradation and eventually experience faults and failures. The complexity of these systems, which provides unprecedented level of functional capabilities, puts forward formidable challenges in predicting, tracking and identifying the trend and source of degradations and failures. However, methods and tools for electronic prognostics in Automatic Test Systems (ATS) are still limited. Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI) and Montana State University (MSU) intend to develop standards-conformant tools and processes to support electronics maintenance by leveraging a diagnostic reasoner (Testability Engineering And Maintenance System Remote Diagnosis Server (TEAMS-RDS)) and a prognostic reasoner (Standards-based Analysis Platform for Predictive Health and Integrated Reasoning Environment-Prognostics (SAPPHIRE-P) ) in the DoD ATS framework. The proposed effort will result in a software environment that is standards-conformant ePHM tool based on managing and combining test and diagnostics data from the UUTs and ATE test results, and aggregating the information across the spectrum of UUTs and ATE in the Navy to enhance the prognostic performance. To embed the developed tools and processes into the Navy and DoD ATS, the adoption of prognostic extensions to current industry standards and possibly the creation of entirely new standards devoted to the needs of ePHM will also be recommended.