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1 The current pressure across the entire aerospace industry to reduce operating costs and increase efficiency has arguably never been greater. Thus the need to improve parameters such as availability and reliability, and increase the tools and services associated with more efficient aircraft operations and sustainment is now paramount. Moreover, these improvements are seen by many as important factors that define the differentiation and competitiveness of not only current but also future aircraft fleets. The paper will focus on some of the opportunities for OEMs that arise from implementing Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) systems on their platforms and the challenges associated with evaluating the costs and benefits of their implementation and operation.

The cost-benefit analysis is one of the key decision aspects regarding the investment on IVHM systems especially for aerospace applications where the evaluation of the impacts of such systems on costs, safety and weight are critical for the vehicle operation during its lifecycle. This paper presents the application of linear programming to select and to quantify how many components an IVHM system should consider in order to maximize the total value that it delivers. This approach advantage is that it uses an exact algorithm, that guarantees the optimal solution given the inputs provided by the user. The formulation shows how the technical value of an IVHM solution can be evaluated taking into account key aspects for aerospace platforms such as weight, reliability and bus capacity restrictions through a linear integer programming model solved using the branch-and-bound method.