Automatic auditing of the quality of environmental simulation tests in theaerospace industry

In the aerospace industry, the verification of the behaviour of the compone nts of aircrafts under extreme environmental conditions is essential. When a component passes an environmental simulation test, the quality manager of the certification laboratory must guarantee that the component has been te sted with the plan required by the component manufacturer. In other words, the quality of all tests must be audited. This work presents a layered arch itecture approach to build generic auditing systems. An easily customizable , distributed computer system is used to automatically audit all the test c hambers and all tests carried out in the laboratory. To verify the effectiv eness of this approach, a customized version of the generic auditing system was installed in the laboratory of Drager Hispania (Aerospace Division). P ublished by Elsevier Science B.V.