Stakeholder-oriented systematic design methodology for prognostic and health management system: Stakeholder expectation definition

Prognostic and health management (PHM) describes a set of capabilities that enable to detect anomalies, diagnose faults and predict remaining useful lifetime (RUL), leading to the effective and efficient maintenance and operation of assets such as aircraft. Prior research has considered the methodological factors of PHM system design, but typically, only one or a few aspects are addressed. For example, several studies address system engineering (SE) principles for application towards PHM design methodology, and a concept of requirements from a theoretical standpoint, while other papers present requirement specification and flow-down approaches for PHM systems. However, the state of the art lacks a systematic methodology that formulates all aspects of designing and comprehensively engineering a PHM system. Meanwhile, the process and specific implementation of capturing stakeholders’ expectations and requirements are usually lacking details. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes a stakeholder-oriented design methodology for developing a PHM system from a systems engineering perspective, contributing to a consistent and reusable representation of the design. Further, it emphasizes the process and deployment of stakeholder expectations definition in detail, involving the steps of identifying stakeholders, capture their expectations/requirements, and stakeholder and requirement analysis. Two case studies illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology. The proposed stakeholder-oriented design methodology enables the integration of the bespoke main tasks to design a PHM system, in which sufficient stakeholder involvement and consideration of their interests can lead to more precise and better design information. Moreover, the methodology comprehensively covers the aspects of traceability, consistency, and reusability to capture and define stakeholders and their expectations for a successful design.