Trends in Test – 1. Standardise to Optimise Your Test Strategy
30 April 2010
This is the first in a series of articles, written for EMTww by National Instruments, looking at emerging Trends in Test. We kick off the series with a look at standardisation
Keeping up with the latest technology trends in the test and measurement industry is one of the biggest challenges for test engineers and managers. To address this, National Instruments draws upon knowledge and experience of a wide range of industries to create the Automated Test Outlook. Every year, this outlook highlights the major trends, this year across five categories: business strategy; architectures; computing; software; and I/O. For 2010, the trends identified as having a significant influence on automated test in the next one to three years are standardisation, multichannel RF test, peer-to-peer computing, embedded design and test ,and reconfigurable instruments.
In a series of five articles for EMTww, we will examine each of these trends in greater detail, looking into how they can help you optimise your own test procedures.
Reduce Cost and Increase Reuse through Standardisation
As many organisations experienced fast-paced growth through the 1990s and 2000s, a loss of focus on test commonality was fostered by the pressure to bring products to market in shortening timeframes. As companies have been forced to reduce operational costs to maintain profitability through the recession, test has not been immune from cost-cutting procedures. To succeed, people, processes and technologies require better organisation in system development, deployment and operation.
A lack of commonality in software and hardware usage leads to specialised test systems per product, design phase or geographic location. Consequently, specific code must be written for each system, more training is required for operators and greater capital cost of test equipment is incurred. By organising your test strategy around a common platform, code sharing across projects is simpler, staff skill sets become more transferrable and the operational overhead and footprint of redundant test systems can be reduced.
Standardisation strategies vary widely from company to company, depending on business needs and the existing structure of their test systems and it is a good idea to initially identify which of the three main vectors of standardisation will be most appropriate: validation to manufacturing, local to global deployment, or product-to-product lines. It is recommended that companies will see the greatest benefits from implementing standardisation in at least two of these areas, though one should always be wary of taking on too much complexity by trying to solve everything at once.
Companies should consider a number of factors when deciding on the method and scale of standardisation they wish to implement. There is a balance to be found between too rigid a standard and no standard at all. With no standard, it is difficult to adjust to production needs, causing a slow time to market due to the need for multiple one-off systems and support requirements. On the other hand, too rigid a standard, meaning that your test equipment is ready to fit every single use case, can be overly elaborate and prove expensive. The optimal solution tends to lie between the two extremes, utilising a common core with specified application extensions. Depending on organisational needs, this core could be an approved list of vendors or products, a particular hardware platform or a more complete platform tester. This approach tends to yield the most flexible solution, providing easy integration with legacy and existing testers.
Following the correct steps to specifying a platform to standardise upon is also a very important process. The best approach tends to involve gathering measurement needs, rather than simply listing capabilities of existing test systems, helping to filter out legacy requirements and cutting overall costs by eliminating additional functionality that is no longer used.
In addition to hardware, in recent years there has been a dramatic shift towards the use of software-defined test systems. For this reason, a common software framework is critical for achieving successful standardisation, as it provides a universal interface between all systems. A modular software architecture allows systems to share functionality, such as process models, database and report logging, hardware abstraction layers and user interfaces. This reusability of code allows engineers to spend more time on developing test sequences and I/O programming, rather than having to develop entire test management and enterprise connectivity solutions as well.
Executing a well-planned standardisation effort is proving to have significant business impact across all types of companies and industries, regardless of volume, mix and number of sites. A prime example is Hella KGaA Hueck & Co., a supplier of lighting and electronics to the automotive industry. Michael Follman, Executive Vice President for Electronics Operations, stated that:
"Global production test standardisation allows Hella to maintain its high product quality in a cost-effective and scalable manner, helping us realise a 46 percent reduction in operational test cost and savings of an additional investment of a million Euros every year."
Hella now consider their test system standardisation to be a competitive advantage across all elements of their business, such as development, deployment and operations. This advantage is within the reach of any company with the desire to achieve it. With proper planning and commitment to execution, standardisation paves way to removing legacy test systems, eliminating wasted time and reducing unnecessary costs.
By Jeremy Twaits – Technical Marketing Engineer, National Instruments UK & Ireland
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