Legacy test systems — Replace or maintain

Test platforms age, the components within the test systems degrade, become obsolete and wear out over time. Manufacturing companies must continuously evaluate the expected lifespan of their test equipment and determine the risk and tradeoffs associated with replacing the equipment vs. maintaining the equipment. Both industry and government entities continually struggle with how to best evaluate and address the issues of aging test equipment and systems. This paper reviews the various options available to test engineers when faced with replacing or maintaining a test system. Specifically, the manufacturing / test community must evaluate the consequences, risks and costs associated with each choice: 1. Do nothing and continue to maintain equipment until equipment failure. 2. Rejuvenate equipment by replacing components / instruments. 3. Replace existing equipment with modern automated test equipment. 4. Outsource manufacturing and test of product to a supplier. To help quantify the decision making process the use of an evaluation tool can help analyze the factors that influence the “replace or maintain” question. Each of the options listed above carries with it its own list of questions that must be addressed. These questions are encoded into the tool with responses then interpreted and results collated with user historical data, providing the test engineer with quantifiable and meaningful data for evaluating the cost of replacing or maintain factory test equipment. The following sections detail how this tool can be developed and utilized as part of the “replace or maintain” decisional process.