To access the conference event, go to the PHM2021 Conference Hub: www.phmsociety2021.org.

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 an increased opportunity to gain unique knowledge.


Panel Session Topics:

  1. Cybersecurity and PHM: Securing the OT and PHM Data Streams
  2. Standards
  3. Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Predictive Maintenance and Analytics
  4. PHM for Space Applications
  5. Digital Twin
  6. PHM for Manufacturing: Assessing Operations to Advance PHM Capabilities
  7. Unlocking the Potential of Automotive PHM
  8. An Integrated Architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems Health Management
  9. Qualifying Data and Data Use – Assuring Data Capability for Intelligent Systems and Beyond
  10. Experience and Lessons Learned over the Multiple Eras of PHM Development and Implementation

Panel Committee Chair:

Brian A. Weiss, National Institute of Standards and Technology


Panel Session Schedule:

No.Panel NameDate/Time
1Standards (slides)Tue 13:30 – 14:45
2Cybersecurity and PHM: Securing the OT and PHM Data StreamsTue 14:30 – 15:45
3Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Predictive Maintenance and AnalyticsWed 11:00 – 12:15
4PHM for Space ApplicationsWed 12:15 – 13:30
5Digital Twin (slides)Wed 14:00 – 15:15
6PHM for Manufacturing: Assessing Operations to Advance PHM Capabilities (slides)Wed 15:15 – 16:30
7Unlocking the Potential of Automotive PHM (slides)Thu 11:00 – 12:15
8An Integrated Architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems Health ManagementThu 12:15 – 13:30
9Qualifying Data and Data Use – Assuring Data Capability for Intelligent Systems and Beyond (slides)Thu 13:45 – 15:00
10Experience and Lessons Learned over the Multiple Eras of PHM Development and ImplementationThu 13:45 – 15:00

Panel Session Details:

Panel 1: Standards (slides)
Chair: Jeff Bird, Rogers
Moderator: Karl Reichard, Pen State University

Standards have proven invaluable to the industries for which they are developed. Some standards may be regulatory while others may be voluntary. Regardless of their requirement, standards can be invaluable to an organization’s growth and sustainability. These documents can offer a range of values including reducing the risk of technological adoption, anticipating technical requirements of emergent technologies, protecting health and safety, increasing productivity, promoting efficiency, and reducing costs. Documents can range from prescriptive standards to guidelines, to suggested best practices offering a range of flexibility in their deployment. Published by standards development organizations with input from industry practitioners, academics, research institutes, and government organizations, these documents can take years to produce.

The PHM community has benefited from published standards and continues to support their development to increase the industry’s ability to adopt emerging and advanced PHM technologies. Numerous PHM Society members are active in several standards committees whose focus is on developing PHM-focused documents. This panel features leaders and members of several PHM-focused committees including ASME, ISO, and SAE. The standards generation process will be discussed including how topics are defined, documents are developed, and standards are ultimately approved for public usage.

Questions to be addressed:
1. What new existing and new standards are coming from the main standards developing organizations?
2. How to contribute and identify gaps?
3. How is the PHM Society trying to integrate access?

Outcomes
1. Summary of access methods – PHM Society website – standards page; dedicated sites
2. Priorities on gaps in knowledge & processes
List of Panelists:
• Rhonda Walthall, Collins Aerospace
• Brian Weiss, National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Tim Felke, Garrett Motion
Panel 2: Cybersecurity and PHM: Securing the OT and PHM Data Streams
Chair: Radu Pavel, TechSolve
Moderator: Brian Weiss, National Institute of Standards and Technology
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an accelerated digitalization of the work environment and the adoption of remote supervision of manufacturing assets and production. In this new digital manufacturing ecosystem, the Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) approach is becoming the strategy of choice for the advanced manufacturing enterprise. The value of real-time data from various functions, and the benefits of new technologies fuel the desire to connect production and non-production devices on the factory floor. However, the appetite for advanced technology is rapidly exceeding the organizations’ ability to protect it, and this connectivity and data-rich environment raise significant concerns and challenges associated with cybersecurity.
 
This panel will explore the latest trends regarding standards, regulations, strategies, and technologies aiming to secure the operational technology (OT) and PHM data and information. The panel also aims to reveal perceived challenges faced by the developers, implementers, and providers of PHM technology, and their current strategies for mitigation.
List of Panelists:
• David Carter, CyManII
• Berardino Baratta, MxD Institute
• Michael Powell, National Cybersecurity Center for Excellence at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Panel 3: Applying Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Predictive Maintenance and Analytics
Chair: Andrew Harper, Georgia Tech Research Institute
With the increasing prevalence of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML), and the widening adoption of Model-Based Systems Engineering practices (MBSE), applied AI/ML and MBSE are having a significant impact on the PHM community. From predictive maintenance planning through neural net data training and digital twin development to distributed enterprise-level systems engineering, these cutting-edge capabilities are impacting all operational domains across the public and private sectors.
 
Panelists will discuss lessons learned and best practices leveraging these emerging technologies. Topics will include integrating and leveraging SME expertise jointly with data science, system-level challenges to real-world MBSE implementation, and demystifying considerations when applying AI/ML to fielded challenges in the field. 
List of Panelists:
• Chris Shumeyko, JAIC
• Derrick Kozlowski, SOCOM
• Sean Ducker, NAWCAD
Panel 4: PHM for Space Applications
Chair: Derek DeVries, Northrop Grumman
Moderator: Andy Hess, The Hess PHM Group
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. Besides 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, in-crease efficiencies, and ensure resilient sustainment of these vehicles, platforms, habitats, and systems.
List of Panelists:
• Morteza Safai, Boeing
• Homer (Heath) Dewey, Northrop Grumman
• Sudipto Ghoshal, Qualtech Systems, Inc.
Panel 5: Digital Twin (slides)
Chair: Antonios Kontsos, Drexel
Moderator: Sarah Malik, Drexel
The motivation for this panel is two-fold. First, the number of applications where the digital twin concept is used (in the context of digital enterprise and digital transformation) increases continuously. The main reason for this trend can be found on the growing and in some cases mandated process of digitally threading an increasing number of systems in which sensor data is interfaced with archiving, processing, computing, and decision-making tools. Second, the associated hardware and software components used to design such digital twins provide increased capabilities. From the Internet of Things (IoT) workflows to machine learning and artificial intelligence methods, the range of options that are available to construct digital twin paradigms is practically vast.
 
In this context, the objective of this panel is to invite the PHM community to a focused discussion related to the concept of digital twins. Experts from industry, government, and academia will provide their views while there will be sufficient time for a live discussion and exchange of ideas. More specifically, this panel will focus on and discuss the following related topics and challenges in this field: a) efforts to standardize digital twin processes or at least validate parts of them using traceable, repeatable and effective ways; b) issues related to creating validated dataset repositories which could assist model and processing approach development, independent of a given application and of case-specific data acquisition, and contributing towards demonstrations of successful alignments of the physical and digital spaces; c) benchmark problems tailored to a PHM-related hierarchy of detection, classification and prediction, similar to other domains e.g. in nondestructive evaluation, material characterization, as well as inspection and maintenance; d) modeling including knowledge-based, deep learning, probabilistic, analytical, physics-based etc., which could be leveraged in digital twin workflows; e) efforts to use digital twinning not only in forward flows that involve steps from data to decision but are also creating dynamic adaptations capable of evolving as monitoring occurs, providing feedback to sensors as data is processed and ultimately even creating real autonomy via e.g. data and model-driven adaptive control.
List of Panelists:
• Benjamin L. Grisso, Naval Surface Warfare Center
• Tom Wiegele, Collins Aerospace
• Yolanda Mack, Raytheon
• Sankaran Mahadevan, Vanderbilt University
Panel 6: PHM for Manufacturing: Assessing Operations to Advance PHM Capabilities (slides)
Chair: Brian A. Weiss, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Moderator: Gregory Vogl, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Manufacturing has evolved over the last few decades to leverage emerging and advanced technologies. Many of these technologies enable the growth of PHM capabilities including the advancement of monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics to enhance decision-making and maintenance strategies. Manufacturers recognize that these emergent PHM capabilities can enhance their maintenance strategy – optimize planned downtime and minimize unplanned downtime – to achieve more reliable, and ultimately, more profitable operations. For manufacturers to realize advanced PHM within their facilities, they face a challenging reality – How do they assess their PHM capabilities and the value it obtains? And, more importantly, what is the value they want to achieve and the corresponding PHM capabilities to be added?
 
This panel will focus on how manufacturers can assess their current PHM capabilities and how they can determine what levels of PHM are most desired by their organization. This will be paired with individual value propositions in terms of the expected return on investment of additional PHM capabilities along with a discussion of current maintenance expenses. 
List of Panelists:
• Adam Simpson, Atlas Roofing
• Douglas Thomas, National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Matt Malloy, EWI/Buffalo Manufacturing Works
• Graham Immerman, Machine Metrics
Panel 7: Unlocking the Potential of Automotive PHM (slides)
Chair: Steve Holland, VHM Innovations, LLC
Moderator: Tim Felke, Garrett Motion
The automotive industry has proven to be one of the most fertile application domains for PHM technology in terms of financial impact, analytics sophistication, and sheer scale. Successful examples have been implemented for both manufacturing systems and the automotive vehicles themselves. The case has been made for even greater opportunity in coming decades as the continuing electrification of vehicles takes place. Similarly, the potential impact for fleets is anticipated to be huge. This applies to conventional automotive and trucking fleets as well as for future autonomous fleets. But, the pace of PHM introduction continues to lag behind what it might be. This panel seeks to understand the key enablers for recent industry successes as well as the barriers that have limited more rapid progress. The discussion will be centered on strategies that effectively exploit those enablers while mitigating the barriers.
List of Panelists:
• Troy Shilling, Bosch
• Joe Klesing, Nexteer
• Rex Struble, SafeRide Technologies
• Shiming Duan, GM
Panel 8: An Integrated Architecture for Cyber-Physical Systems Health Management
Chair: Frank Zahiri, United States Air Force
Moderator: Scot Hudson, ALAE Solutions
As the complexity of modern manufacturing, transportation, and industrial systems increases, the need for improved system resilience, reliability, and safety, follows an increasing trend. Technologists attempting to develop and introduce integrated process/system methods for such complex systems must introduce new and novel system engineering concepts that integrate facets of modeling, testing, analysis, and algorithm development. The Cyber-Physical Systems community has an expressed interest in the health status of integrated processes/systems, i.e., questions are raised as to whether specific processes are available to perform the next work tasks, or a sequence of processes is not suffering individual process losses that might compromise the operational objectives of the whole system of systems. It is of interest to investigate technologies that can address such questions. Large scale systems (industrial and manufacturing processes, transportation systems) are subjected to fault/failure modes at the component level. They might propagate to other healthy components and, eventually, migrate to the subsystem (inspection station, repair/overhaul, etc.) and system levels. High-fidelity models at the subsystem level are difficult and time-consuming to develop. Moreover, sensing modalities at the component level monitoring their health status are mostly absent. It is imperative, therefore, that investigations of the health status at the integrated process level must rely on simple methods that take advantage of the structural and functional properties of such complex systems.

This panel will discuss the following topics:

• We will begin with a definition and typical examples from Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) domain
• Determining the health status of integrated CPS
• Modeling of CPS at the system and subsystem levels
• Reasoning paradigms for determining diagnostic and prognostic approaches at the subsystem level
• Examples from the industrial and manufacturing areas
List of Panelists:
• WenZhan Song, University of Georgia
• Mehrdad Pakmeher, ControlX, Inc.
• Peng Liu, Penn State
Panel 9: Qualifying Data and Data Use – Assuring Data Capability for Intelligent Systems and Beyond (slides)
Chair: Michael Sharp, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Moderator: Vincenzo Ferrero, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Reliable information and quality data are the foundations of the PHM philosophy. Qualifying that data for a range of applications can build trust in end users by providing expectations and limits to how the data should be used. This can also aid developers and solution providers who need an understanding of the data to make the best use of its capabilities. Understanding information, such as where the data comes from and how it can be used, is integral to the creation of optimal intelligent systems, viable models, and trustworthy information capable of providing actionable decision support.

This panel seeks to discuss the mechanisms for qualifying data collection, documentation, and use as it applies to specific domain applications within the PHM community. Although some qualifications of data are agnostic of application, other questions such as ‘how much data do I need’ or ‘is this an acceptable level of uncertainty’, can only be answered within the context of the end goals and application. Some data collection and storage methods may also dictate the capabilities of that data. E.g., just because a data set is appropriate to build a time series model – it may not work for frequency. Can metadata or data provenance help to communicate this type of information? The goal of this panel is to present and discuss mechanisms for measuring the quality of the collection, use, and return on investment for data and any associated models primarily with current goals in mind while leaving room for potential expansion in the future.
List of Panelists:
• Radu Pavel, TechSolve
• Lou Zhang, Machine Metrics
• Anna Connte, National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Coline Bolland, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Panel 10: Fireside Chat Panel – Experience and Lessons Learned over the Multiple Eras of PHM Development and Implementation
Chair: Andy Hess, The Hess PHM Group
Moderator: Derek Devries, Northrop Grumman
This panel will be made up of several “seasoned” experts who have been developing and implementing PHM-related capabilities and technologies for a great number of years. This panel will use their experiences and stories to explore the issues, barriers, and lessons learned that have evolved across the many eras of PHM-related activities, development, expanding applications, and implementation.
List of Panelists:
• Mark Redding, Poseidon Systems
• Dave Daniszewski, Army DEVCOM
• Mark Walker, D2K Technologies