Panel Sessions

The PHM Society provides an opportunity to hear and interact with recognized industry leaders in relevant areas for our PHM work. These 90 minute panel sessions will consist of presentations and open discussion by 4-6 panelists directly engaging with the conference audience on the different topics listed below.

These sessions add an enriching dimension to the conference experience and a welcome networking alternative to traditional paper presentations, which dominate some conferences. We believe balancing the conference time in this fashion provides participants a much more engaging experience and increased opportunity to gain unique knowledge.

Panel Session Topics:

  • PHM for Space Applications
  • PHM Standards—Why are they important for your work and how to participate
  • Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul (MRO) / Hangar of the Future
  • Cybersecurity and PHM: Challenges and Solutions
  • Perspective on Predictive Maintenance from the Joint AI Center’s Joint Logistics Mission Initiative
  • Data-Driven Decision Support Systems for Smart Communities

Panel Committee Chairs:

Brian A. Weiss (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

Panel Session Schedule:

Panel Day/Time
PHM for Space Applications Wednesday, 11 Nov 2020, 12:00 – 1:30 EST (UTC-5)
PHM Standards—Why are they important for your work and how to participate Wednesday, 11 Nov 2020, 2:30 – 4:00 EST (UTC-5)
Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul (MRO) / Hangar of the Future Thursday, 12 Nov 2020, 12:00 – 1:30 EST (UTC-5)
Cybersecurity and PHM: Challenges and Solutions Thursday, 12 Nov 2020, 2:30 – 4:00 EST (UTC-5)
Perspective on Predictive Maintenance from the Joint AI Center’s Joint Logistics Mission Initiative Friday, 13 Nov 2020, 11:00 – 12:30 EST (UTC-5)
Data-Driven Decision Support Systems for Smart Communities Friday, 13 Nov 2020, 1:30 – 3:00 EST (UTC-5)

Panel Session Details

PHM for Space Applications
Leads: Derek DeVries (NGC) and Andrew Hess (The Hess PHM Group)

Description: The planned use of manned and long-term crewed space platforms, as well as quick to launch and reusable space vehicles, is increasing at a very accelerating rate. After the legacy NASA developed Space Shuttle and LEO ISS; among many things, there are near term NASA plans for: a lunar Gateway station, a permanent lunar base, asteroid present, and Mars bases. Vehicles and platforms to accomplish these far reaching goals will include: crewed space and surface based stations and habitats; various types of launch, long range transportation, and orbit to surface vehicles; and all kinds of support subsystems and technologies. Beside NASA and other government directed organizations; commercial based entities are aggressively developing systems to achieve these same and additional space related goals. These commercial focused applications include tourist to space and LEO, space-based hotels, and lunar and deep-space resource mining. This panel will focus on issues and challenges associated with these applications; and how PHM capabilities can be applied to reduce risks, increase efficiencies, and ensure resilient sustainment of these vehicles, platforms, habitats, and systems.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD

PHM Standards—Why are they important for your work and how to participate
Lead: Brian A. Weiss (NIST)

Description: The PHM Society mission emphasizes free and unrestricted access to PHM knowledge, promotion of interdisciplinary and international collaboration in PHM and leading the advancement of PHM as an engineering discipline. Standards need to be seen and readily used by the PHM community as enablers for development and implementation of PHM technology. The extensive and long-term work by a wide variety of Standards Developing Organizations like ASME, IEC, IEEE, ISO, NIST, SAE, SCC is essential but perhaps not accessible by new and even seasoned members of our community. From the PHM18 panel, “there must be hundreds of standards applicable in PHM”. A review last year looked at standards in a digital age.

The panel format will be a review and discussion for standards impact: Reviewing the Society standards information portal content, as a start on what products and coordination the Society can provide to make PHM standards enablers for your work. We will discuss your questions like:

  • How do you or your organization participate?
  • What pain points can be addressed through the development and integration of standards?
  • What are some success stories?
  • How to get involved in the development and review of evolving guidelines, best practices and standards?
  • How users and smaller organizations participate?
  • What should the Society’s role be- Requests for Concepts, Portal, Success Stories, Gap Analysis?

Completion of these objectives will be planned within the Standards User Group established in the Society.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD

Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul (MRO) / Hangar of the Future
Lead: Frank Zahiri (U.S. Air Force)

Description: The key focus for the PHM MRO Sector panel will be on the capabilities for an integrated aircraft sustainment process in order to enhance and increase customer support. The panel will include experts in life cycle management, product support, supply chain management, and maintenance services. They will bring expertise in the area of improving aircraft availability and reduction of associated costs thru MRO/Hangar of the Future. Collaboration on key elements in the sustainment process is essential and can be achieved by integrating with an optimized supply chain process thereby driving efficiencies. The speed at which aircraft move through the hangar results in higher availability. This examination of the processes which impact aircraft maintenance, include maintenance production execution, maintenance planning and optimization, asset health and performance monitoring, supply chain and logistics. Driving digital transformation on the shop floor (digital factory), modelling (combine data-driven and physics-based), quality and test will be presented to support execution of maintenance, repair, overhaul, modifications/retrofit, and modernization of processes.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD

Cybersecurity and PHM: Challenges and Solutions
Leads: Timothy Zimmerman (NIST) and Radu Pavel (TechSolve)

Description: PHM systems, along with numerous other systems and technologies, were not inherently designed with cybersecurity in mind. These types of systems must be protected from vulnerabilities that may arise as a result of their increased connectivity, use of wireless networks and sensors, and the wide distribution of sensitive PHM data. Exacerbating the problem, especially in the industrial process control domain, is the potential for negative performance impacts resulting from the integration of common cybersecurity technologies into existing systems. Internet of Things (IoT)-based PHM provides its own set of unique security challenges including data integrity, data leakage, privacy, and the potential for unauthorized access.

This panel will explore the fusion of cybersecurity and PHM, how to enable secure operation of PHM systems while maintaining system performance, and discuss the integration of existing cybersecurity standards and guidance on PHM systems. The panel also seeks to understand specific cybersecurity challenges faced by operators of PHM systems and their potential solutions.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD

Perspective on Predictive Maintenance from the Joint AI Center’s Joint Logistics Mission Initiative
Lead: Dr. Maria Seale (US Army Engineer Research and Development Center)

Description: The US Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) was established in 2018 to enhance the ability of DoD components to research and launch new initiatives in Artificial Intelligence. Predictive Maintenance (PMx) was one of the inaugural National Mission Initiatives of the JAIC, due to its large-scale potential impact across multiple services. JAIC PMx launched its efforts in early 2019, with multiple, cross-cutting projects centered on predictive maintenance for rotorcraft. This considerable endeavor encompasses topics ranging from engine health modeling, to maintenance logbook data mining using natural language processing, to cross-correlation of flight and maintenance data for identifying factors relevant to component failure, and more. This panel will feature representatives from JAIC PMx and participating organizations to discuss PHM challenges in the current projects, and lessons learned for future applications.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD

6. Data-Driven Decision Support Systems for Smart Communities
Leads: Abhishek Dubey (Vanderbilt University) and Gautam Biswas (Vanderbilt University)

Description: Smart cities are a case-study in multi-domain data-driven systems. The problems of ‘closing-the-loop’ in all smart city applications such as transit, policing and emergency response are compounded due to the spatial and temporal scales of operation, heterogeneity, and complexity of the underlying physical systems, their interaction with socio-economic behaviors, and risks of cybersecurity and privacy. Of particular concern are the emerging privacy and trustworthy analytics challenge. This panel session will feature social, policy, and data-science experts that will highlight the state of the art and the fundamental challenges that cities are facing as they implement smart services and systems. Panelists will address trust models, online learning for city scale decision support systems emphasizing the interactions between privacy, security, bias, and reliability from both theoretical and operational perspectives.

List of Panelists:

  • TBD