GD to supply first health and usage monitoring system for British Army

25 June 2012 army-technology.com

General Dynamics UK has received a contract from the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to supply the first systems information exploitation / health and usage monitoring system (SIE/HUMS) to the British Army.

Under the £4m deal, the company will install the systems in a total of 578 vehicles, including six protected patrol vehicle (PPV) variants in the operational training fleet to help enhance their availability and operations.

Armoured vehicles to be equipped with SIE/HUMS include the Mastiff, Ridgback, Husky, Jackal, Coyote and Wolfhound.

According to GD, the selection was based on the cost-effectiveness of the solution and also took into consideration the company's previous work, which included integration of more than 15,000 vehicles from the British Army's fleet.

The SIE/HUMS system is designed to enable operators and fleet managers to optimise vehicle use and minimise maintenance by providing accurate performance data, obtained through monitoring of onboard systems.

"The SIE/HUMS system is designed to enable operators and fleet managers to optimise vehicle use and minimise maintenance by providing accurate performance data, obtained through monitoring of onboard systems."

Data gathered will also help the personnel to enhance fleet availability, which will deliver an improved army vehicle fleet-management capability, in addition to allowing conditioned-based maintenance where lightly-used vehicles receive less work, which will eventually reduce maintenance costs.

The data collected and analysed by the system will range from engine management-system data, such as oil and water temperature, speed, distance travelled, and performance, to information about shocks and vibration, excessive vehicle speed or high fuel consumption.

Once the data is collected, operators conduct a statistical time-based analysis to identify potential problems; as more information is gathered, prognostics will also allow for better preventative maintenance practices, which contribute to increasing fleet availability.

The system is designed to be generic vehicle architecture (GVA) compliant and can plug-and-play with other GVA devices to improve onboard capabilities, as well as being modified through software configuration to record data as required.