Defining Integrated Vehicle Health Management Requirements for Unmanned Aircraft Using a QFD Approach

Abstract

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) is the transformation of system data into information to support operational decisions. IVHM has to take into account the vehicle’s use and maintenance throughout its whole life cycle. The decisions made during the design of the IVHM system on-board a vehicle will have through life implications. Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) consisting of various elements operating as one in a System of Systems (SoS), but with each element having a unique set of stakeholders and requirements, only adds to the complexity. It is therefore important to understand the requirements of an IVHM system throughout a UAS’s life and how these requirements interact with each other. This paper describes the development of a cascading Quality Function Deployment (QFD) to relate the mission and customer’s requirements to the requirements for an IVHM system for the UAS through a hierarchical system of Houses of Quality (HoQ), each representing a different stakeholder group representing aspects of operating an UAS. The UAS considered in this paper to illustrate the process of creating a QFD for the assessment of IVHM requirements is a long endurance civil commercial UAS offering a flight/data service. The paper also comments on how the IVHM requirements QFD process can be adapted for use with other assets.