ATE and quality-an user´s view

The test strategy for a manufacturer of a high-technology electronic system is directly related to a more general strategy involving the implementation of industrial means to reach high-level quality standards. To meet these quality standards, quality-improvement programs involving the whole personnel as well as the manufacturing processes are considered more efficient than systematic sorting. These programs affect the test implementation and impose two contradictory demands: new products use new technologies stimulating the use of increasingly sophisticated automatic test equipment (ATE), but older products, or fielded products, favor the retention of obsolete ATE due to the cost and difficulty of transposing data between ATE from different generations. It is felt that the issue of supporting obsolete (or at least not state-of-the-art) ATE will exist until this problem is solved