San Francisco, CA – May 16th, 2023 – The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment™ (FACE) Consortium has released a new Conformance Contributions to Airworthiness guide, detailing how artifacts and activities for FACE Conformance contribute to flight certification evidence.
The guide is aimed at suppliers that are developing FACE conformant software in parallel or prior to the development of verification evidence for flight certification. Conformance to the FACE Technical Standard produces artifacts that can be leveraged as developers and integrators move towards flight certification (qualification for airworthiness). The guide targets two representative standards for airworthiness – the international civilian standard DO-178C/ED12C and the US military standard MIL-HDBK-516C.
Programs of record under the Department of Defense (DoD) are increasingly requiring software components that are FACE conformant due to the benefits of modularity, portability, and ease of integration. The new guidance can reduce the cost and effort of achieving FACE Conformance in addition to flight certification. Specifically, it aims to cross-reference activities and artifacts for FACE Conformance that can contribute to airworthiness evidence required for flight certification.
“The release of the Conformance Contributions to Airworthiness is an important milestone in our ongoing journey to refine business processes and technical practices that promote integration and delivery of improved capabilities. It provides an important tool for those needing to leverage both airworthiness and FACE conformance requirements. We are proud that our comprehensive conformance program continues to grow, and positively impact not only the industry, but also our national and international membership,” commented Alicia Taylor, The Open Group FACE Consortium Director.
The guide brings key benefits for system integrators planning to incorporate FACE Units of Conformance (UoCs) as well as to developers and suppliers of the UoCs, as an aid for planning and development of their software. They can expect reduction in effort and schedule by leveraging data produced to achieve FACE Conformance to also be used to support flight certification, ultimately reducing the acquisition costs of airworthy systems that incorporate FACE UoCs.
Software components certified as FACE conformant are also meant to be reused, leading to recurring savings. Additionally, to support software product lines, the artifacts can be revised, and have reuse benefits when extended into other product lines, such as document templates.
The Open Group FACE Conformance Contributions to Airworthiness, Version 1.0 can be found here.
About The Open Group FACE™ Consortium
The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment™ (FACE) Consortium, established in 2010, is a government, industry, and academia collaboration that encourages innovation in refining business processes and developing vendor-neutral open standards which enable software portability, reusability, and interoperability. The FACE ecosystem addresses all five principles of MOSA. Further information on the FACE Consortium is available at www.opengroup.org/face
About The Open Group
The Open Group is a global consortium that enables the achievement of business objectives through technology standards. Our diverse membership of more than 900 organizations includes customers, systems and solutions suppliers, tool vendors, integrators, academics, and consultants across multiple industries. Further information on The Open Group can be found at www.opengroup.org.
