Prognostics and Health Management (PHM)

Prognostics and Health Management is an engineering discipline that combines condition monitoring, diagnostics and failure prediction to manage the health of equipment across its life. It moves maintenance from reacting to faults toward forecasting and preventing them.

PHM is the broader framework that ties together the data and methods behind predictive maintenance. It covers sensing and data acquisition, diagnostics (detecting and isolating a fault), prognostics (estimating how a fault will progress and how much useful life remains) and the decision logic that turns those estimates into maintenance actions.

A PHM system reasons about failure modes for a specific asset, tracks health indicators against them, and produces both a diagnosis and a forward-looking estimate of remaining useful life. This lets operators schedule interventions, stage spare parts and prioritise across a fleet.

PHM matters most for assets where unplanned failure is expensive or unsafe — turbines, aircraft systems, large rotating machinery. By managing health over the whole life cycle rather than at fixed intervals, it reduces both downtime and unnecessary maintenance.

Related terms

Predictive Maintenance (PdM) · Condition Monitoring · Remaining Useful Life (RUL) · Prescriptive Maintenance (RxM)