If we had a crystal ball, we would only test the bad boards. But we don't, so why do it?
Often a company with a new product is so excited to introduce it that manufacturing test is overlooked. Products roll off the assembly line and some staffers turn them on and use them before shipping them. This can go well for a time but eventually one of the following problems occurs:
A customer has a bad out-of-box experience with a product that fails in a way not covered at test.
A “bad batch” of product is produced and many units can’t be shipped.
Should We Go To The Design Engineer?
From here it is natural to ask the product’s designer(s) what to do about it. The designer is usually already assigned a new product to develop and is responsible for keeping the other project on schedule. As a result the problems reported by the manufacturing team are generally interpreted as minor projects to be completed as quickly as possible. Often the designer has jigs used personally during prototype to validate the design, and provides or adapts one or more Design Validation Tests (DVT) to production.
Design Validation Tests Effectiveness
When DVT tests are used to diagnose individual problems that occur in production, they can initially be quite effective. Each DVT test covers one feature in depth and can provide a lot of insight for a problem within its scope. The in-depth, investigatory nature of DVT makes it time consuming to apply. This frustrates the manufacturing team when products pass the test because of the time and money spent running the test on a board that did not “need” it. What manufacturing needs is tests that cover a breadth of hardware quickly.
Why not go back to the design engineer and get the DVT test adapted for manufacturing?
Here are the Differences:
Manufacturing tests are much different from product design and validation. It takes time and practice to get good at developing manufacturing test. You pay your design engineers to be good at designing products. Why pay your product designers to stop designing and learn how to develop manufacturing tests? And find a go between to get the needs of the manufacturing team implemented into the test solution. . .
Ready to Take the Next Step?
OEMs hire us to develop manufacturing tests so their design teams can focus on developing the next product. CAE Integration specializes in meeting the needs of manufacturing while cutting engineering burden. Hit the button below to set up a meeting.
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