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 six 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

  • Special Session: PHM for Human Assets
  • Panel Session: Wind Energy
  • Panel Session: Oil and Gas, Automation and PHM
  • Panel Session: Automotive PHM and Advanced Analytics
  • Panel Session: PHM Education and Professional Development
  • Panel Session: PHM Standards Experience for Manufacturing
  • Panel Session: Smart Manufacturing PHM
  • Panel Session: Railway PHM
  • Panel Session: Department of Defense (DoD) Condition Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) Service Panel Review
  • Panel Session: Big Data Analytics
  • Panel Session: Select Military Maintenance Projects Funded through the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) Program.
  • Panel Session: Fielded Systems

Panel Session Chair:
Brian Weiss

Panel Session Schedule

Panel Day/Time
Special Session on PHM for Human Assets Monday afternoon
Wind Energy Tuesday morning
Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Tuesday morning
Automotive PHM and Advanced Analytics Tuesday afternoon
PHM Education and Professional Development Tuesday afternoon
PHM Standards Experience for Manufacturing Wednesday morning
Smart Manufacturing PHM Wednesday morning
Railway PHM Wednesday afternoon
Department of Defense (DoD) Condition Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) Service Panel Review Wednesday afternoon
Select Military Maintenance Projects Funded through the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) Program. Wednesday afternoon
Big Data Analytics Thursday morning
Fielded Systems Thursday afternoon



Panel speakers from:

  • Air Force (Wright-Patterson AFB)
  • Alstom Transport
  • ARMACO
  • Baylor College of Medicine
  • BKV
  • The Boeing Company
  • Bosch
  • Boulder Brands
  • CISCO
  • De Wardt and Company, Inc.
  • DNV GL
  • drR2
  • EDF
  • Falconry
  • General Motors
  • Georgia Tech
  • Honeywell
  • Hyundai
  • ITAMCO
  • Manufacturer’s Edge
  • Mathworks
  • NASA
  • NIST
  • NRC Rail
  • NREL
  • NSBRI
  • PARC
  • Romax
  • SAE International
  • Sikorsky
  • Simularity
  • University of Arizona
  • University of Cincinnati
  • University of Pittsburgh
  • University of Texas – Austin
  • VisioStack

Panel Session Details

Special Session on PHM for Human Assets
Session Chair: Wolfgang Fink, University of Arizona (Slides)
Description: Predictive Health Management (PHM) originated in the Aerospace Industry, basically trying to predict when what part would fail for what reason(s) in order to make (preventive) maintenance more efficient and cost-effective. This panel discusses contributions in the fields of wearable smart sensors, sensor-data-fusion, machine learning and data mining, prediction and diagnosis, and electronic health records and databases – all in the context of prognostics and health management for human performance on Earth and in Space. Moreover, this panel builds on the discussions of the experience and processes encountered/created by the panelists and highlights some specific challenges, needs, and wants with respect to the development and implementation of standards and guidelines pertaining to PHM in the area of human assets. This diverse group of panelists present their standards and guidelines perspectives on PHM for human assets. Conversations will include PHM’s current and envisioned applications within general healthcare, theatre, and space environments along with how the needs, data stream, and supporting PHM tools, can be better designed, developed, implemented, verified, and validated to impact smart healthcare.
List of Panelists:

  • David Hilmers, former US Astronaut, Baylor College of Medicine (Slides)
  • Dorit Donoviel, NSBRI (Slides)
  • Col. ret. Ron Poropatich, University of Pittsburgh (Slides)
  • Mark Derriso, Wright-Patterson AFB
  • Dragan Djurdjanovic, UT Austin (Slides)

Panel Session: Wind Energy
Session Chairs: Junda Zhu (NRG)
Description: • The nature of the planetary section design of wind turbine gearboxes calls for the most advanced prognostics and health management solutions in hardware, software, logistics and algorithm perspective. These technology advancements require field and lab based testing along with the valuable experience from wind farm operators and maintenance practices. Moreover, due to the stochastic nature of wind speed and direction, the operating condition of wind turbine drivetrain is continuously fluctuating. Combined with the dynamic adjustment from the control system, it is a global challenge to offer robust diagnostic solutions that can provide stable and accurate readings regardless of the operating condition variation. On top of that, prognostics capability is also crucial to optimize the wind farm maintenance strategy and maximize turbine availability and production rate. Therefore, as more and more owners and operators adopting the predictive maintenance strategy, PHM technology will be an irreplaceable tool on the fleet, system and component level maintenance planning.
List of Panelists:

  • Shawn Sheng, NREL
  • Zhiwei Zhang, Romax
  • Alex Byrne, DNV GL
  • Junda Zhu, NRG

Panel Session: Oil and Gas, Automation and PHM
Session Chairs: Rune Schlanbusch, Teknova AS
Description:As oil companies race for cost reduction, considerable work is invested in automatizing the process of drilling and production. One of their goals is to minimize the offshore crew and replace it with small crews in operations centers controlling the installations from land. Condition based maintenance is seen as an important topic towards realizing offshore autonomy without hampering risk. For efficient development, equipment groups have to be identified which leads to the most necessary and cost efficient results. The chosen monitoring technology must have strict requirements with respect to reliability and need rigorous documentation, for fitting the acceptable risk levels within the industry. Current challenges include no clear standardization and IT security.
List of Panelists:

  • Joseph Thorp, ARAMCO
  • Rune Schlanbusch, Teknova AS.
  • Neil Eklund, Schlumberger
  • Gilbert Chahine, National Oilwell Varco

Panel Session: Automotive PHM and Advanced Analytics
Session Chairs: Steven W Holland, General Motors (Slides)
Description: PHM technology has entered production use in the automotive domain and is expected to become increasingly important for 1) Advanced Diagnostics and 2) True Prognostics. The scope of this panel includes the opportunities and barriers to the growth of PHM for commercial and, possibly, fleet applications. This panel is highly qualified to address the critical role suppliers will need to play in collaboration with the OEMs/Integrators to maximize the value to themselves but more importantly to the end customer. The power of Advanced Analytics further expands the scope and illustrates the paradigm shifting nature of the opportunity before us.
List of Panelists:

  • Yilu Zhang, General Motors
  • Barry Einsig, CISCO
  • Tim Felke, Honeywell
  • Mohak Shah, Bosch
  • Mircea Gradu, Hyundai

Panel Session: PHM Education and Professional Development
Session Chairs: Jeff Bird (Rogers) and Karl Reichard (Pennsylvania State University) (Slides)
Description: Successfully implementing PHM technologies across diverse sectors requires practitioners with multi-disciplinary knowledge and complex applications experience. The academic sector provides the bases in various specialties through degrees, certificates and short courses. Are these good enough tooIs to convince asset managers to develop and implement impactful PHM solutions? The PHM Society has proposed a PHM Taxonomy to define the skills and mastery levels. In addition, the Society has proposed a Continuing Professional Development scheme to guide practitioners, employers and educators. Challenge to the speakers and audience:

  • How do PHMers systematically broaden and deepen their skills to ensure impactful solutions?
  • Do they and their employers need guidelines, resources, mentoring?
  • Are the academic domain and technical societies doing enough?
  • How do they convince risk averse asset managers to develop and implement PHM?
List of Panelists:

  • George Vachtsevanos, Georgia Tech
  • Greg Kacprzynski, Sikorsky (Slides)
  • Ravi Rajamani, drR2 Consulting
  • Kai Goebel, NASA
  • Lachlan Astfalck, University of Western Australia

Panel Session: PHM Standards Experience for Manufacturing
Session Chairs: Jeff Bird (Rogers) and Ravi Rajamani (drR2 Consulting) (Slides)
Description: This panel sets the stage for beginning the PHM Society community’s conversation with respect to the standards needs and wants of manufacturing stakeholders. The panel’s goals are to: understand the contributions and development needs for information, guidelines and standards for PHM technologies in the aerospace sector; and how these could be the basis for other sectors, particularly the complex domain of manufacturing. First to introduce the needs and opportunities for PHM contributions to in the manufacturing sector. Then to show how information documents, recommended practices and standards have been developed systematically, for example, under SAE International HM-1 for the aerospace sector. Finally, to discuss the management of this development, and implementation process from the point of view of SAE International. Then with the audience, to identify key needs and development processes in preparation for the following Smart Manufacturing Panel.
List of Panelists:

Panel Session: Smart Manufacturing PHM
Session Chairs: Brian A Weiss, NIST (Slides)
Description:As manufacturing environments become more complex, fault and failure opportunities increase throughout the factory. Manufacturing complexity can stem from many factors including greater flexibility and reconfigurability in manufacturing processes (to leverage new technology and/or support product customization. This complexity forces manufacturers to assess and re-assess areas of risk within their manufacturing processes. Those areas of greatest risk often become ideal targets for PHM. Including PHM (i.e., condition monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics) can increase operational efficiency and decrease downtime. This panel both builds on the discussions of the experience and processes from the Standards Experience for Manufacturing Panel and highlights some specific challenges, needs, and wants with respect to the development and implementation of standards and guidelines with respect to PHM. This diverse group of panelists present their standards and guidelines perspectives on PHM within Smart Manufacturing. Conversations will include PHM’s current and envisioned applications within factory environments along with how the needs, data stream, and supporting PHM tools, can be better designed, developed, implemented, verified, and validated to impact smart manufacturing.
List of Panelists:

Panel Session: Railway PHM
Session Chairs: David Siegel, Predictronics
Description: The maintenance strategies for rolling stock, railway infrastructure, and signaling equipment for the railway industry are moving towards a more predictive and condition based maintenance approach. With the advances in sensors, data and network infrastructure, and advanced data analytics, the railway industry has made great strides in realizing predictive maintenance offerings and has the ability to further extend these offerings in the near future. There are numerous examples of predictive maintenance for infrastructure (track geometry/rail condition, point machines), rolling stock (brake pads, diesel engines, traction motors, wheel health, real- time monitoring /event analysis), and the panelist will discuss some of these current efforts. In addition, the panelist will discuss the current challenges (both business and technical) for developing and deploying PHM technologies in the railway industry. Lastly, some thoughts on the future direction of PHM and data analytics for the railway industry will be discussed from both the panelist and the audience members.
List of Panelists:

  • Parham Shahidi, PARC
  • Yan Liu, National Research Council Canada
  • Pierre Dersin, Alstom Transport
  • Zachary Garner, VisioStack
  • Milan Karunaratne, GE Transportation

Panel Session: Department of Defense (DoD) Condition Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) Service Panel Review
Description: A panel of Service leaders from across the Department will showcase their evolving Condition Based Maintenance Plus (CBM+) capabilities. The panelists will summarize the challenges and benefits experienced while identifying, developing, implementing, and maturing the Services’ approaches to improve weapon system sustainment. This discussion will share best practices and highlight the enabling tools and technologies that are driving increased operational readiness and reduced logistics cost through more effective maintenance practices.

Opening Keynote Address: Mr. Kevin Bostick, Army AMC Deputy G3/4 for Logistics Integration
Panel Moderator: Mr. Greg Kilchenstein, Director, Enterprise Maintenance Technology, Office of Secretary of Defense for Maintenance

Panelists:

  • Mr Dave Pack, Army G-44(M) CBM+ Program & Field Maintenance
  • Ms Debora Naguy, Air Force AFLCMC Product Support Engineering
  • Mr Marc Borkowski, NAVSEA 04RM Maintenance Engineering
  • Mr Dwayne Cole, NAVAIR CBM+ Enterprise Team

Organizers:

  • Mr. Andy Hess, The Hess PHM Group
  • Mr. Greg Kilchenstein, Director, Enterprise Maintenance Technology, Office of Secretary of Defense for Maintenance
  • Mr Dave Cutter, Logistics Management Institute
  • Ms Debbie Lilu, NCMS

Panel Session: Select Military Maintenance Projects Funded through the Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) Program
Description: A panel consisting of industry maintenance providers will present the technology projects that have been funded and developed to address specific maintenance challenges across the Department of Defense (DoD). The panelists will discuss the development of their projects from the initial requirement and resourcing to prototyping and fielding. The scope of technologies being presented will include intermittent fault detection, maintenance inspection automation, task performance visualization, and big data analytics. This discussion will show how maintenance activities and industry participants can leverage the CTMA collaborative agreement between the DoD and the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) to develop critical maintenance capabilities not otherwise available. Additional project information is available at the CTMA booth in the exhibit hall.
Panelists:

Panel Moderator: Ms Debbie Lilu, Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities Program Director, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences

Panelists:

  • Ms Michelle Dickey, SAS
  • Ken Anderson, Universal Synaptics
  • Patrick Henning, Spectro, Inc.

Organizers:

  • Mr. Andy Hess, The Hess PHM Group
  • Mr. Greg Kilchenstein, Director, Enterprise Maintenance Technology, Office of Secretary of Defense for Maintenance
  • Mr. Dave Cutter, Logistics Management Institute
  • Ms. Debbie Lilu, NCMS

Panel Session: Big Data Analytics
Session Chairs: Jonathan Bednar, Boeing
Panel Organizer: Greg Bower, QorTek
Description: Performing PHM at its basic core is collecting and analyzing data looking for and identifying trends and features that can be used to determine system health. Accomplishing PHM requires data from many different sources and thus leading data derived/driven approaches into the ‘Big Data’ paradigm. The Internet of Things (IoT) is an example that is fast becoming a vast land of ‘Big Data’ ripe for processing. A necessity is thus to efficiently process and mine the data.

The panelists in this session will describe approaches used to efficiently processes ‘Big Data’ in order to produce the attributes necessary for successful PHM. Current and state of the art analytic approaches will be discussed based upon the experiences of the panelist and audience. In addition, the application of cloud based computation will be discussed. Applications of discussed approaches will also be included and audience participation will focus on other potential applications and approaches.

List of Panelists:

  • Gregory Ditzler, University of Arizona (Slides)
  • Seth Deland, MathWorks
  • Bill Nieman, General Electric (Slides)
  • Bill Roberts, SAS (Slides)
  • Neil Eklund, Schlumberger (Slides)

Panel Session: Fielded Systems
Session Chairs: Andy Hess, Hess PHM Group, and Brian A Weiss, NIST (Slides)
Description: Much can be learned from the requirements generation, devel- opment, Verification and Validation, implementation, maturation, fielded use, and fleet support of real world PHM systems. Just the development of the individual capabilities that make up a compre- hensive and fully integrated PHM system; provides a large number of lessons learned – both good and bad. These need to be dis- cussed, documented, and viewed across the many industry sec- tors that are fielding PHM systems.
List of Panelists:

  • Steve Holland, GM
  • Tim Felke, Honeywell
  • Pete Carini, UTAS