A holistic approach to reducing the life cycle costs of test

Many studies have shown that 90% of the production costs are cast before the first unit flows off the production line. Therefore, it's very difficult to reduce the cost of the bill of material, assembly, capital, or test after the fact. Historically, design engineers focus on material and assembly cost but neglects the impact of test design, test implementation, test labor and test equipment costs. Test and manufacturing processes when considered early in the design process can be estimated and controlled by the leveraging of existing test infrastructure. The challenge is to understand what test capabilities exist? What are the common links between current and future product test needs? What percentage of the measurement requirements can be supported prior to design completion? Can current production test assets be used for design verification, to minimize startup challenges? What are the measurement and accuracy capabilities of the existing test assets? What is the impact of the current tester accuracy on production yield? In this paper, we will describe tools to help develop a structure for a common test strategy that will reduce the overall cost of test throughout the total product life cycle while accelerating the time from design to manufacturing, without compromising.