Condition Based Maintenance + Data Collection and Offloading

A key requirement to successful fleet management is to have relevant and abundant data made available to the fleet managers. Access to accurate and sufficient fleet usage data enables decision-makers to drive strategies to reduce costs, increase system availability, and direct condition-based maintenance (CBM+) actions prior to system failure. The first step in obtaining the necessary data is to collect it from embedded sensors and make it available for offload. Once fleet managers receive the data, they can analyze it to identify trends that inform maintenance decisions. This paper describes how the Diagnostics And System Health (DASH) vehicle health management system (VHMS) has been integrated on the M109A7/M992A3 Family of Vehicles (FOV) to enable the collection and storage of Army Bulk CBM+ Data (ABCD) files. By processing system sensor data locally and creating compressed Common Data Format (CDF) files, DASH avoids the problems commonly encountered when attempting to move large, custom data files across low bandwidth networks. After DASH stores the ABCD data in a series of CDF files, the M109 FOV Data Off-loader moves the data onto an external computing platform from where it can be further transferred into a larger fleet management system for further analysis. This paper also discusses the challenges involved in establishing the necessary infrastructure to implement a comprehensive CBM+ system.