The role of test in total quality management

The quality of a delivered product or system is ultimately limited by the quality of its design and manufacturing process. Defects that escape the design, manufacturing, and test processes are delivered to customers. Process Potential Index (Cp) and Process Capability Index (Cpk) are now widely used to express design and manufacturing quality. Design quality may be estimated from product models, if they exist, or measured using parameter test data. The difficulty in using test data is not so much in the calculations, but in the recording, storing, and selection of the data to be used in the calculations. This paper defines the metrics of quality estimation and describes an implementation of a system for estimating defect levels and process capabilities. The implementation includes the definition of a standardized parametric data exchange language for test data and an analytical system to standardize product quality measurement     

Implementing reusable, instrument independent test programs in thefactory

Development of computer programs that control test sequences on Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) is costly and time consuming. Test Programs are usually written by specifying the instruments to be used in the ATE and the sequence of the setup and measurement parameters for these instruments. Reuse of test program software on other ATE is usually not possible without rewriting, revalidating and re-releasing the programs. This paper describes an implementation of a test program software development system and a standard of software runtime architecture used in our factories. The object-oriented development environment and its associated class libraries allow test programs to be written without knowledge of the ATE on which they will be run. Two main principles guided the design: the software architecture was based on recognized formal and industry standards; and our implementation used commercial off-the-shelf software products when possible. Emerging standards such as the IEEE-1226 (ABBET) as well as defacto industry standards including VXI Plug and Play have made our implementation possible. The current draft of the ABBET and P&P standards do not promote this instrument independence, but it is hoped that this will be added as the standards mature. Three immediate benefits are: cost savings that result from reusing validated test programs; cycle time reductions that result from concurrently developing test program software and ATE; and software defect reductions that result from using proven software