A familiar cry heard with most any description of eXpress, is "top-down!". eXpress can handle both top-down and bottom-up, but it is its top-down capabilities that set it apart. This is especially true for IVHM design because the very notion of IVHM is a system-wide coordinated approach towards fault reporting, diagnosis and remediation.Although the roots of IVHM are in the safety world, IVHM has quickly moved into the maintenance world as well. The benefits it can bring to such a wide range of problems, also pushes it to the forefront of any effort. The challenges to the design team are in proving IVHM's merit to ensure it brings the maximum benefit, and does not get thrown onto the chopping block.
 | Shown to the left is a typical solution to handling both safety critical items that often require immediate reaction, as well as important, but non real-time functions, such as trending analysis. The vehicle management functions tend to be broader functions that factor in the mode of operation, while the area manager functions handle things like engine management, where hundredths of a second count. It is these types of architecture decisions that must be assessed, fairly quickly within a systems engineering process, in order to support early, proper decision-making. |
eXpress brings a unique ability to this problem. As various architectures emerge for implementing the solution, how quickly can you determine the impacts (detection rates, false removals, support costs, etc.) that might be expected with that approach? This is the problem that eXpress solves.