Providing early warning and assessment of vehicle design problems with potential operational impact

A system, comprising:

• one or more computer processors;
• and
• a memory containing computer program code that, when executed by operation of the one or more computer processors, performs an operation comprising:
• retrieving problem report data for at least a first class of vehicle, comprising:
• retrieving a plurality of user-submitted problem reports, each comprising a natural language description of a respective problem occurrence for a respective in-service vehicle of the first class of vehicle;
• retrieving a plurality of service events, each specifying a fault code;
• and
• retrieving a plurality of sensor events, each corresponding to a respective occurrence of a pattern of data being received from one or more sensor devices;
• calculating a vector representation for each of the plurality of user-submitted problem reports, the plurality of service events and the plurality of sensor events, wherein a first vector representation is generated for a first user-submitted problem report containing natural language text describing the respective problem occurrence for the respective in-service vehicle of the first class of vehicle;
• reducing a dimensionality of the vector representations;
• calculating similarity values between the vector representations;
• categorizing each of the vector representations into one of a plurality of problem categories, based on the similarity values;
• calculating a respective measure of impact for each of the plurality of problem categories;
• and
• prioritizing corresponding maintenance schedule and design updates for at least one aircraft during development, based on the calculated measures of impact.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium containing computer program code that, when executed by operation of one or more computer processors, performs an operation comprising:

• retrieving problem report data for at least a first class of vehicle, comprising:
• retrieving a plurality of user-submitted problem reports, each comprising a natural language description of a respective problem occurrence for a respective in-service vehicle of the first class of vehicle;
• retrieving a plurality of service events, each specifying a fault code;
• and
• retrieving a plurality of sensor events, each corresponding to a respective occurrence of a pattern of data being received from one or more sensor devices;
• calculating a vector representation for each of the plurality of user-submitted problem reports, the plurality of service events and the plurality of sensor events, wherein a first vector representation is generated for a first user-submitted problem report containing natural language text describing the respective problem occurrence for the respective in-service vehicle of the first class of vehicle;
• reducing a dimensionality of the vector representations;
• calculating similarity values between the vector representations;
• categorizing each of the vector representations into one of a plurality of problem categories, based on the similarity values;
• calculating a respective measure of impact for each of the plurality of problem categories;
• and
• prioritizing corresponding maintenance schedule and design updates for at least one aircraft during development, based on the calculated measures of impact.