Demonstrating the capabilities of IEEE standard P1636.2 mai in support of the DoD ATS framework

The ATS Framework Working Group focuses on identifying commercial standards that are not only acceptable to the needs of the DoD, but to industry as well. Therefore, the group is tasked with supporting, evaluating, and demonstrating the ability of the standards to meet the ATS Framework goals and objectives. Of particular interest to this paper is the ATS key element Maintenance Test Data and Services (MTDS). This key element addresses a need to share information across maintenance levels and across DoD / Industry ATS. The current information structures are often Service or platform dependant. Even though these systems do a good job of providing a logistics infrastructure, they seldom share information back to the maintenance chain or across platforms and Services. The sharing of this information is essential in performing complex and sophisticated diagnostics over the product's life cycle. Given a standard set of definitions and data formats, information may be shared among all users who have implemented the standard data content and format.