Vote for the 2008 Test Engineer of the Year
Our editors selected six finalists for this annual award. To help choose the winner, cast your ballot by December 5.
-- Test & Measurement World, 10/1/2007 2:00:00 AM
The responsibility for ensuring the quality and reliability of electronics products falls squarely on the shoulders of test engineers, whose work touches every stage of a product’s life as well as every component that
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PREVIOUS WINNERS: 2007: John Gmitter 2006: Zafer Boz 2005: Anthony Levandowski 2004: Chris Grachanen 2007 Finalists | 2006 Finalists 2005 Finalists | 2004 Finalists |
makes up a product. In the lab, in the factory, and in the field, test engineers weed out faults that can lead to poor products and can sully the reputations of companies and even countries.
To acknowledge this essential role of test engineers, Test & Measurement World announces its fifth annual Test Engineer of the Year competition. Thanks to the contributions of the award sponsors—Keithley Instruments and National Instruments—the winning candidate will designate a $20,000 donation to an engineering school.
Test & Measurement World will present the 2008 Test Engineer of the Year award at our annual “Best in Test” ceremony scheduled to be held in conjunction with the 2008 APEX Show (April 1–3, Las Vegas, NV). In addition, we will profile the winning engineer in the cover story of our April 2008 issue.
In recent weeks, we’ve received many nominations of outstanding test engineers from a broad range of fields. Our editors have selected the six individuals presented here as the finalists for the award. Please review their profiles both for on-the-job skills and for overall contributions to the test field and the industries they serve.
WE MUST RECEIVE YOUR VOTE BY DECEMBER 5, 2007.
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2008 Test Engineer of the Year Finalists: Craig Stoldt | Richard Stilwell | Hung Nguyen Pat McGinnis | Steve Kobs | James J. Grealish Go to the ballot and cast your vote: Click Here |
BOARD TEST
James J. Grealish, Intel
With more than 25 years in board test, James “JJ” Grealish has worked on important disk drive projects for Western Digital and computer motherboards for Apple. For the last 12 years, he has served as senior board test technologist with Intel’s Test Development Engineering group in Portland, OR, where he is responsible for looking at the roadmap for board test, identifying potential problems, and working toward solutions.
“In 2006, I gave a presentation at the International Test Conference, outlining the growing problems with test access as motherboards become more and more dense,” recalled Grealish. In no small part, that presentation led to a cooperative effort between Intel and Agilent Technologies to spread the use of Agilent Bead Probes in high-volume in-circuit test. This technology places solder beads or “bead probes” directly onto PCB signal traces, a technique that cuts manufacturing costs by eliminating rerouting of signal paths during board layout to accommodate traditional test pads.
Several OEMs have already adopted the technique, which Grealish believes will extend the viability of in-circuit test for years to come. He now spends time educating other engineers on how to implement the new technology.
Read more about James J. Grealish and link to relevant sites.
MEDICAL
Steve Kobs, GE Healthcare
Every day, hospital medical staffs make critical decisions based on data collected and displayed on bedside patient-monitoring devices. It goes without saying that the reliability of such equipment is essential.
At GE Healthcare, Steve Kobs led the engineering team responsible for designing an automated manufacturing test system for the company’s latest data-acquisition product for monitoring, the CARESCAPE patient data module (PDM). This device, about the size of a paperback book, collects and processes parametric information on vital signs such as blood pressure, blood oxygen levels, respiration, temperature, and cardiac output.
Kobs and his colleagues designed a “one touch” test system that incorporates an interface between the bundle of parametric cables and the device under test, allowing for a single insertion and automated ejection. In conjunction with a patient simulator designed by Kobs, the fixture also tests the PDM’s ability to recognize and communicate with “smart” cables connected to it.
Among other advances, the fixture pioneered “forced maintenance” features that Kobs says will be used on testers for other products. These include automatic lock-down of equipment for maintenance after a prescribed number of tests have been performed, a strategy that helps eliminate test-induced failures.
Read more about Steve Kobs and link to relevant sites.
FAILURE ANALYSIS
Pat McGinnis, IBM
“When standard tests and diagnostics can’t isolate fails, that’s where I come in,” said Pat McGinnis of his troubleshooter role at IBM’s Systems and Technology group, where he heads an engineering team in a pivotal diagnostics lab.
McGinnis and his colleagues have performed structural and functional tests, as well as image diagnostics, on dozens of high-profile chips. These include: the latest dual-core IBM Power6 processor, the STI (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) Cell processor, the Xbox 360 game chip, and the Nintendo PowerPC game processors. The team has also conducted key fault localization for 45-nm, 32-nm, and LP (low power) process functional test macros.
McGinnis stressed the importance of targeting the product and the process simultaneously. As demand for his lab’s services grows, his toughest job is to find and train engineers skilled in using both automated test equipment and sophisticated failure-analysis tools, such as laser scanning and photo emission microscopes and picosecond imaging circuit analysis (PICA) tools.
But the rewards can be huge. “We’ve fixed problems that impacted yields as much as 60 to 70%,” said McGinnis. “This work can affect business in a very high-dollar way.”
Read more about Pat McGinnis and link to relevant sites.
MICROWAVE TEST
Hung Nguyen, Raytheon
Dr. Hung Nguyen, Raytheon’s chief scientist, has spent more than 20 years designing, integrating, and testing advanced airborne radar systems. Hung’s role as a premier problem solver begins when a radar system’s hardware and software are integrated in the lab. And it carries through with tests when the radar is mated with the mission-control computer and avionics during flight testing. Even after a system is handed off to production, Nguyen is on call if manufacturing tests turn up problems. Finally, he sits in on design reviews to apply lessons learned from his work on four pivotal radar systems.
Much is at stake. “With the millisecond response times required in military operations, our tests must ensure that radar is free of any anomalies,” explained Hung. “We need to test the system not only to verify what it is supposed to do, but also to raise questions when it’s doing what it’s not supposed to do.”
In Raytheon’s new APG-79 system, now being deployed on the Navy’s F18 fighters, Hung and his test colleagues had to ensure reliability of a complete redesign of the receiver/exciter, the processing system, and the antenna, which features a fixed array with active electronic beam scanning. The payoff for Raytheon: a multiyear, $580 million contract.
Read more about Hung Nguyen and link to relevant sites.
SOC/RF TEST
Richard Stilwell, Analog Devices
As medical ultrasound systems are packaged into ever-smaller instruments, they no longer have enough real estate to accommodate image-acquisition technology that uses multiple components and ICs. Analog Devices has met the needs of such applications with its AD9271, an eight-channel system-on-chip (SOC) device that combines a low-noise amplifier, a variable-gain amplifier, an anti-aliasing filter, and a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter. Compared to discrete elements, the AD9271 reduces the area per channel by more than one third.
Combining these functions in an SOC for ultrasound presented tough test challenges, and it fell to Richard Stilwell, staff test development engineer, to find a test platform capable of testing all the functions simultaneously. His choice: the LTX Fusion, which delivered test times half that of the nearest competitors.
For such SOC applications, Stilwell noted that it is essential for test engineers to have a thorough understanding of the end product and its operation. “This requires a much greater system knowledge,” said Stilwell, whose work has set the stage for testing future system-level chips in an economical fashion.
Read more about Richard Stilwell and link to relevant sites.
AEROSPACE TEST
Craig Stoldt, Manufacturing Technology
What do you do when expensive military test equipment threatens to become inoperable, as the government extends the operational life of aircraft beyond the ability of vendors to support aging ATE systems? You call on engineering manager Craig Stoldt, whose employer—Manufacturing Technology—is a leader in a field called “obsolescence mitigation.”
With more than 35 years of ATE experience, Stoldt has become an expert in breathing new life into legacy systems by finding both hardware and software fixes that can emulate the original technology. “Our work takes a lot of reverse-engineering skills,” noted Stoldt, “and the goal is always to make the test interfaces look the same to those who do the testing.”
Cost controls are a prime consideration. “We’re always asking how we can reuse what is still functional,” he explained. “In some systems, hundreds of test programs have been devised, and we want to make sure that we can use as many of them as possible in our upgraded ATE design.” With such strategies, Manufacturing Technology has saved its military clients many millions of dollars.
Aside from his job, Stoldt remains active as a teacher, instructing other engineers on ATE, test-program development, and ATLAS, a military test-programming language.
Read more about Craig Stoldt and link to relevant sites.
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Go to the ballot and cast your vote. 2008 TEST ENGINEER OF THE YEAR NOMINEES: Craig Stoldt | Richard Stilwell | Hung Nguyen Pat McGinnis | Steve Kobs | James J. Grealish |
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