Policy, Regulations and Standards in Prognostics and Health Management

As the field of PHM matures, it needs to be aware of the regulations, policies, and standards that will both impose boundaries as well as provide guidance for operations. All three - regulations, policies, and standards - provide information on how to design or operate something, but with different degrees of enforceability. Policies include both public policies as well as organizational policies. Operators may be required to adhere to public policies(say, an environmental policy which provides guidance for the pollution prevention act (the latter is a US law)) whereas organisational often reflect policies that come out of strategic considerations within private organizations (such as maintenance policies). Regulations (such as aeronautics or nuclear energy) typically impose binding rules of engagement and are imposed by regulatory bodies that are responsible for a particular field. Standards, in contrast, are community-consensus guidelines that are meant to provide benefit to the community by describing best practices. Adoption of such guidelines is entirely voluntary but may provide benefits by not having to reinvent the wheel and for finding common ground amongst other adopters. Awareness of both guidelines and barriers will enable practitioners in adopting best practices within the legal constraints. This paper provides an overview of the current regulations, policies, and standards in the field of Prognostics and Health Management.