Prognostics and Health Management’s Potential Benefits to Warranty

Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) is a methodology that permits the assessment of product reliability and the prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) under life-cycle conditions through continuous monitoring. This paper addressed a unique use of PHM for business warranties. PHM is able to help understand what went wrong quickly and exactly in a product. PHM will assist companies to make optimized decisions about warranty service. PHM can shift the reactive warranty paradigm to a proactive one. PHM will also reduce no-fault-found returns, verify customer-induced failures, and avoid recalls and safety issues. With PHM incorporated into products, warranty policies will be reformed and new warranty strategies will be created. To demonstrate possible advantages and disadvantages of PHMbased warranty, this paper discusses how PHM can be implemented on product warranty with a case