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Why AS6500? Where did it come from? Why does it exist? Those are easy questions to answer. It came from the inspiration of angels and it exists to make your life, and your factory, more perfect. That's why, when you open the standard, you can still hear the faint echoes of the singing of angels. Actually, experts were gathered from across the country, both from the Defense Department and from industry to create the new document. They toiled away until the perfect product emerged from the fruit of their labors: Aerospace Standard AS6500, "Manufacturing Management Program," published in November 2014. How to Manage the Perfect Factory combines education and instruction with fun, laughter and motivation. The book gently pokes fun at the people and organizational barriers that the Manufacturing function must overcome to make those obstacles seem more surmountable while providing key information on implementing AS6500.

Written by Kirsten Koepsel, a lawyer and engineer whose work has focused on aviation cybersecurity, Supply Chain Vulnerabilities Impacting Commercial Aviation addresses the big question facing aircraft manufacturers today: keep the work in house or outsource it? The ongoing battle between cost cutting and supply-chain control is ever more visible as aircraft OEMs have full order books and tight delivery schedules. Since the 1980s, commercial aviation, like many other industries, looked for ways of more economically sourcing parts and services. The new partnerships between OEMs and suppliers at multiple levels, did make the industry nimbler and more flexible. Yet, it also introduced a higher level of instability, risks and vulnerabilities to the aviation ecosystem.

Why should the supply chain be concerned if their buyers or subcontractors are purchasing counterfeit electronic parts or if their products contain counterfeit electronic parts? If these parts end up in items that are safety critical and security-risk sensitive such as aviation, space, and defense products, whole secure systems can be comprised. As organizations have become aware of counterfeit parts, one of their responses may be to test upon acceptance or prior to receipt. But testing alone may not detect all counterfeits. Possible sources of counterfeits include products that did not meet quality control requirements and were not destroyed, overruns sold into the market place, unauthorized production shifts, theft, and e-waste. The counterfeited electronic part ends up in the supply chain when ordered by an unsuspecting buyer, who does not confirm the originating source of the part.

The Aerospace Supply Chain and Cyber Security - Challenges Ahead looks at the current state of commercial aviation and cyber security, how information technology and its attractiveness to cyber attacks is affecting it, and the way supply chains have become a vital part of the industry's cyber-security strategy. More than ever before, commercial aviation relies on information and communications technology. Some examples of this include the use of e-tickets by passengers, electronic flight bags by pilots, wireless web access in flight, not to mention the thousands of sensors throughout the aircraft constantly gathering and sharing data with the crew on the ground. The same way technology opens the doors for speed, efficiency and convenience, it also offers the unintended opportunity for malicious cyber attacks, with threat agents becoming bolder and choosing any possible apertures to breach security.

In the next decade, commercial aviation will see Next Generation ATM (NextGEN), Single European Skies ATM Research (SESAR), and others utilizing Internet- based air-to-ground communication links for advanced “air traffic control” (ATC) communications. Commercial Aviation Cyber Security: Current State and Essential Reading highlights some of the major issues the industry must confront if the vision of a new, advanced air traffic management is to come to fruition. This will require standardization work to identify key components with built-in cyber security that will guide prototype testing, functionality, and prioritizing implementation efforts to solve the roadblocks to global interoperability. The ten technical papers selected for Commercial Aviation Cyber Security: Current State and Essential Reading span the last decade’s work in commercial aviation cyber security, and aircraft cyber technologies.

As cyber attacks become more frequent at all levels, the commercial aviation industry is gearing up to respond accordingly. Commercial Aviation and Cyber Security: A Critical Intersection is a timely contribution to those responsible for keeping aircraft and infrastructure safe. It covers areas of vital interest such as aircraft communications, next-gen air transportation systems, the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT), regulations, the efforts being developed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and other regulatory bodies. The book also collects important information on the best practices already adopted by other industries such as utilities, defense and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US. It equally addresses risk management, response plans to cyber attacks, managing supply chains and their cyber- security flaws, personnel training, and the sharing of information among industry players.

Today, we are all strongly dependent on the correct functioning of technical systems. They fail, and we become vulnerable. Disruptions due to degradation or anomalous behavior can negatively impact safety, operations, and brand name, reducing the profitability of all elements of the value chain. This can be tolerated if the link between cause and effect is understood and remedied. Anomalous behavior, which indicates systems or subsystems not acting in accordance with design intent, is a much more serious problem. It includes unwanted system responses and faults whose root cause can’t be properly diagnosed, leading to costly, and sometimes unnecessary, component replacements. The title No Fault Found: The Search for the Root Cause was developed to propose solutions to this technical and business challenge, which has become less and less acceptable to the commercial aviation industry globally.

Electronic parts are used throughout industry to run everyday products, such as cell phones, and also highly technical products, such as aircraft, missiles, and spacecraft. Unlike cell phones, which are often replaced every year, the highly technical products may remain in service from 20 to more than 80 years. But what happens if the original electronic part, with a life cycle of 18 months, is no longer available? Some manufacturers have discovered that they have unwittingly purchased counterfeit ones. Counterfeit Electronic Parts and Their Impact on Supply Chains examines how these items are negatively affecting the aviation, spacecraft, and defense sectors and what can be done about it.

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) is a relatively new subject, with its roots back in the space sector of the early 1990s. Although many of the papers written around that time did not refer to it as IVHM, the fundamental principles of considering an integrated end-to-end system to monitor the overall health of the asset were clearly visible. As the subject of Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) and its associated technologies have grown up, businesses are making the transformation from selling a product to selling a service. This can be viewed as a positive disruption, as a relatively small technology breakthrough is being brought to market for a large business benefit. The sequence “sense—acquire—transfer—analyze—act “ feeds the information (processed data) on the asset’s health into the Operations or Management control center.