1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a system, work station and method capable of testing a product and generating a statistical model which predicts the permissibility of making like products that can be provided to a manufacturer who can then use the statistical model to effectively mass-produce and test like products.
2. Description of Related Art
Today when a company designs and builds a product such as an electronic circuit board they often perform a series of tests on the product to characterize that product before mass-producing like products. The characterization of the product results in the generation of a statistical model which predicts the permissibility of making like products that can be used by a manufacturer to effectively mass-produce and test like products. In other words, the statistical model provides data (e.g., nominal, lower and upper test conditions) about a product that a manufacturer can use to test some or all of their mass-produced products to determine if they are functional and satisfy predetermined standards. Traditionally, engineers (or technicians) would have to spend a great deal of time to characterize new products. To characterize new products, the engineers would have to manually change settings on test equipment (e.g. Power supplies) and manually read, write-down, and analyze the results of the tests in order to generate the statistical model.
FIG. 1 (PRIOR ART) is a block diagram illustrating a traditional system 100 including one or more pieces of test equipment 102 that the engineer must manually interact with before being able to manually characterize a new product 104 (shown as a Unit Under Test (UUT)). In particular, the engineer must manually interact with and change the settings of one or more pieces of test equipment 102 (e.g. Power supply and temperature chamber) and then record the measured output of one or more pieces of test equipment 102 before being able to analyze the test results and characterize the UUT 104. For example, before the engineer can manually characterize the UUT 104, the engineer must make incremental changes to the voltage output of a particular piece of equipment 102 (e.g., power supply) that is input to the UUT 104 and then record the incremental changes to an output of the UUT 104 until the UUT 104 is no longer functional. The test equipment 102. Is connected to the UUT 104 using cables 106 (e.g. Power cables, optical cables, co-axial cables). This manual process takes time and is prone to errors, especially when the engineer must manually change and monitor the settings and outputs of several pieces of test equipment at the same time.
Accordingly, there is and has been a need for a system, work station and method than can automatically test a product, collect test data and analyze the collected test data to generate a statistical model which predicts the permissibility of making like products. This need and other needs are satisfied by the system, work station and method of the present invention.
The present invention includes a system, work station and method capable of characterizing a new product including, for example, an electronic circuit board. Basically, the system includes a work station that interacts with and controls one or more pieces of test equipment to test a product under a variety of conditions (e.g., temperature, voltage). While testing the product, the work station collects a wide variety of test data from the different pieces of test equipment. After testing the product, the work station then analyzes the collected test data and generates a statistical model that predicts the permissibility of making a like product that can be provided to a manufacturer who can then use the statistical model to help mass-produce and test like products.