Vote for the 2007 Test Engineer of the Year
Our editors have selected six finalists for this annual award. Now, it’s your turn to choose the winner.
T&MW Staff -- Test & Measurement World, 9/1/2006
Testing is the cornerstone of successful development and manufacturing for any electronic component, system, or end product. Without testing, quality is just a dream. The test engineer builds in quality—from design to production—and often plays a critical role in identifying in-service issues or introducing product improvements.
To recognize the vital role that the test engineer plays and to salute the creativity and hard work that goes into making products safer, more reliable, and more economically viable, Test & Measurement World announces its fourth annual Test Engineer of the Year competition. Thanks to the generosity of the award sponsors—Agilent Technologies, Keithley Instruments, and National Instruments—the winning candidate will designate a $30,000 donation to an engineering school.
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READ OTHER SEPTEMBER ARTICLES: READ ABOUT PREVIOUS 2006 Test Engineer of the Year 2005 Test Engineer of the Year, 2004 Test Engineer of the Year, |
Test & Measurement World will present the 2007 Test Engineer of the Year award at our “Best in Test” gala during the 2007 APEX Show (February 20–22, 2007, Los Angeles Convention Center). In addition, the cover story of our March 2007 issue will profile the winning engineer.
WE MUST RECEIVE YOUR VOTE BY NOVEMBER 3, 2006.
(The balloting for the 2007 Test Engineer of the Year is now closed.)
AEROSPACE
Pavan Bathla
Moog
As test equipment lead for the remote electronic units (REUs) at Moog, a manufacturer of control products for the aerospace industry, Pavan Bathla is responsible for estimating the time, cost, level of automation, resources, and skill sets required for testing. He chooses the tools and platform, architects the hardware and software, and breaks down the tasks for his team to perform.
Due to the production volumes on the REU, Bathla chose what he calls an asynchronous concurrent and reject test strategy, which tests the different REU types in parallel and halts tests on initial failure detection. This strategy provides the highest possible throughput and device utilization, thereby saving his company time and money. He demonstrated expertise in the architecture of the ATE by getting the Simulink actuator model, more than 400 switch permutations, and data-acquisition hardware on both the Windows and PXI-real-time operating systems to all work together in harmony. By using a PXI platform rather than the proprietary DSpace system the company traditionally used, Bathla significantly reduced the cost of hardware-in-the-loop simulation.
In addition, he has led the test software philosophy team for his division and has spearheaded user group meetings. Bathla maintains a blog called Synergy Energy, which is his channel for sharing knowledge and collaborating with counterparts in the industry.
Read more about Pavan Bathla and link to his blog.
METROLOGY
Jay L. Bucher
Promega
Currently manager, metrology services, at Promega, a maker of products that help researchers in the life sciences, Jay Bucher boasts a lengthy career in testing—including 24 years working in US Air Force calibration laboratories. Many of Bucher’s efforts have benefited the worldwide metrological community. For example, he helped create the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Certified Calibration Technician (CCT) Program and is a subject matter expert for exam questions.
Bucher is editor and co-author of The Metrology Handbook and A Quality Calibration System: Developing and Managing a Calibration Program; both issued by ASQ Quality Press. He is also the managing editor and publisher for the ASQ metrology-focused quarterly publication, The Standard, and he has published several papers and made a number of presentations to professional groups.
Over the years, Bucher has served as a division officer for ASQ Measurement Quality Division (MQD) in several capacities and currently is MQD treasurer. He has organized and coordinated a new section in Wisconsin for the National Conference of Standards Laboratories International (NCSLI) and currently is the North Central Regional Coordinator for NCSLI. Bucher is a recipient of the Max J. Unis award, which honors outstanding contributions to the metrological community and is the highest recognition available from ASQ MQD, and he also received the NCSLI 2005 Region/Section Coordinator of the Year Award.
Read more about Jay Bucher and link to his projects.
RF TEST
Stephen J. Cousineau
Skyworks Solutions
Stephen Cousineau is RF production test development manager at Skyworks Solutions, a maker of radio solutions and precision analog semiconductors. He works exclusively in the production test environment, where even a few milliseconds of test time savings is important.
While the ATE systems at the company were able to perform parallel RF testing and the test handlers could perform multisite testing, these capabilities were not being used because of two technical road blocks. First, the tester did not have sufficient RF resources to address all of the I/O ports on a cellular phone transmitter (TX) front-end module in a multisite mode. Second, because the load board was of hard-dock design, it was impossible for engineers to create a load-board layout that did not compromise one of the sites for RF measurements.
Cousineau found the key was expanding the capability of the RF test head through the use of an internally designed RF multiplexer containing switching, filtering, coupling, and amplification. The new RF multiplexer is housed in a fixture that mounts to the test head and soft docks (with flexible RF cables) to the test handler. Custom test code calibrates and controls the RF multiplexer. With this new system, test time has been cut in half and throughput has been doubled.
Read more about Stephen Cousineau and link to relevant sites.
ENVIRONMENTAL TEST
Clayton Forbes
National Technical Systems
Clayton Forbes is the senior dynamics engineer for NTS, an engineering and testing services provider. As the program manager on a qualification and acceptance test program for engine hose assemblies manufactured by Smiths Aerospace for the Space Shuttle, Forbes worked closely with Smiths Aerospace, Boeing, and the United Space Alliance to enable a tight deadline to be met on leak, flow, pressure, and burst testing. When the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier required vibration testing on an onboard file server for the storage of aircraft technical data, Forbes answered the challenge, designing a test fixture to accommodate the 7.5x6x3.5-ft, 3770-lb file server.
In addition to his lab work, Forbes supports customers in aerospace, defense, transportation, electronics, and telecommunications, in both the US and Europe, providing training and consulting services on product design for compliance and reliability. He takes an active role in the development of standards as a participant in the GR-63-CORE Issue 3 and MIL-STD-810G working groups and in the ANSI T1.E1 committee developing compliance standards for telecommunications equipment. Internally, Forbes provides training in dynamics theory and test troubleshooting, enabling best practices to be deployed across the NTS network.
Read more about Clayton Forbes and link to relevant sites.
COMMUNICATIONS TEST
John Gmitter
Harris
John Gmitter is a lead test engineer in Harris Corp.’s RF Communications Division, which designs and manufactures secure radio systems. Gmitter and his team needed to create a “next generation” test platform that would consume less floor space, reduce test times, cost less, and be expandable for increasing throughput.
In particular, the engineers needed to move away from a set of test instruments that was no longer going to be supported by the manufacturer. Gmitter and his team evaluated multiple platforms and hundreds of instruments and ended up developing a modular hardware platform and software architecture that allowed instruments to be interchanged. The architecture supports parallel testing and high instrument utilization. The system, which is built from off-the-shelf hardware and software, can incorporate additional instruments when required. The project accomplished all of the stated goals and is expected to give Harris a competitive advantage.
Read more about John Gmitter and link to relevant sites.
SEMICONDUCTOR TEST
Eric R. Ramelli
Philips Semiconductors
A senior test engineer at Philips Semiconductors, Eric Ramelli has a strong knowledge of the Credence Vista series and the Agilent 93K testers, and he has become a valued mentor for other engineers. He has also helped solve problems when the company has encountered tester limitations. In one case, Ramelli created binning on the ATE to help the production facility pinpoint tester issues. One product being tested required a resistive measurement of 10 ohms. Such small values are difficult to measure due to factors such as tester driver resistance, socket resistance, and contact resistance.
Once an accurate measurement procedure was developed, Ramelli needed to help the production facility determine when the tester hardware was generating incorrect measurements that were causing good parts to fail, such as when a dirty socket added contact resistance. These complications needed to be caught quickly to prevent the rejection and disposal of good parts. Ramelli helped devise many methods—such as a delta resistance calculation between pins—that enabled the test floor to pinpoint troubles. He also developed a test program to allow a microcontroller to trim out its internal RC oscillator circuit. Older methods had extreme test time, which consumed resources. The new test method allows a square wave to be used for comparison purposes to generate the value to be used in the program.
Read more about Eric Ramelli and link to relevant sites
