Design and test converge

Greg Reed, Technical Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 8/1/2006

Test engineers often feel the shrinking time-to-market pinch more than their upstream counterparts do. Under a traditional design-manufacture-test workflow, much of the production time allocation is already "baked in the cake" when test and measurement personnel enter the picture.

Moreover, complex new products with variable production processes require an increasingly automated manufacturing environment where single-item test engineering represents a bottleneck. You may have to sacrifice 100% verification for the sake of making up lost time.

Concepts such as design for manufacturability (DFM), design for test (DFT), design for yield (DFY), and concurrent test engineering attempt to alleviate time-to-market demands by creating a more holistic process. In addition, modular toolkits, automated test equipment, and failure-analysis tools contribute to reduced design and test time allocations.

Balancing reduced test time against full test validation is a constant struggle, especially for challenging applications such as automotive and aerospace systems. Since market pressures dictate high-quality (and often high volume) parts on short notice coupled with lower cost of test, more innovative test strategies and products must evolve. What is your department doing to address design and test convergence?