A case study: Developing a complete test program using IEEE 1641

The IEEE 1641 STD Standard, provides a new way to define test requirements independently of the language and test station platform. Initiatives to put the standard into practice to discover its applicability to industry have been taken. The present study is concerned with this initiative. The objective is to analyze the development effort required by a TPS engineer to produce a Test Program from scratch using only the elements provided by the IEEE 1641 Standard. The study covers the description of test requirements based on the IEEE 1641 constructs to its implementation and execution in a real ATE (the SAMe ATE by Indra Sistemas). The development of a test program applying this standard implies the definition of a new methodology compared to the one traditionally used in the organization. The implementation of the test program brings out the issue of which programming environment to use, and the tools to support the process. The execution of the test program suggests the development of a 1641 compliant Run-Time System (RTS), so that the Test Program generated directly uses the elements defined by the standard (BSC's and TSF's) to implement the test requirements.