ASSET Helps Raytheon And Essential/ODS Move From Development To Manufacturing

"With ASSET, we were able to develop one of our JTAG tests in two weeks. We were amazed how quickly boundary scan test development went."
-- Greg Knight, Raytheon

"We were able to start testing the system via JTAG right away because we didn't have to generate tests from scratch. We just re-used Raytheon's boundary scan tests."
-- Ron Romero, Essential/ODS

CUSTOMER

Greg Knight, Test Engineer for Raytheon Systems. Raytheon Systems Company (RSC) is a global leader in defense electronics and complex integrated information systems.

Ron Romero, Test Engineer for Essential/ODS. ODS Networks, is a leading supplier of data security and high performance networking solutions. ODS Networks acquired Essential Communications, a market leader in High Performance Parallel Interface (HIPPI) technology, in May 1998.

CRITICAL ISSUE

Moving a project from development to manufacturing, and then to a new company, the test engineers didn't want to have to recreate the test vectors.

REASONS As Raytheon's High-speed Parallel Network Switch (HPNS) moved from development into manufacturing, Greg Knight and his test team knew they were going to have problems. The cards were fabricated in a facility miles away from the assembly facility. Fortunately, the ASSET® boundary-scan test system helped make the transition as efficient as possible.

VISION

Bare HPNS control card were fabricated in a facility miles away from the assembly facility where Knight and his team worked. The original plan called for the bare board to be tested on an in-circuit test (ICT) system and then shipped to the assembly plant. ICT fixturing problems in the board-manufacturing plant forced the assembly plant to populate untested boards with components and then test them with boundary scan and ASSET. Numerous application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) complicated the testing of the populated boards. The ASSET-developed boundary-scan tests were also intended for use in Raytheon's repair operation.

"We were running into errors once the components were placed on the board," Knight said. "With ASSET, we were able to develop one of our tests in two weeks. We were amazed how quickly test development went."

Since the HPNS was first developed, its commercial product rights have been transferred by Raytheon to Essential / Optical Data Systems (ODS), Inc. of Albuquerque, NM. Essential / ODS has commercialized the system and introduced it to market. "We gave them the ASSET tests we were using and they got up to speed on them very quickly," Knight said. "They were pleased with how easy to use the ASSET test system is."

WE PROVIDED

ASSET InterTech provided Raytheon the software, hardware, training and support to make the transition from development to manufacturing. The cards were tested using a VXI platform to run ASSET under National Instruments' LabViewTM test executive. "By running ASSET under LabView, we could set it up so that all of our tests would run with just one click of a mouse," Knight said. "LabView provides the user interface and controls the tests once we initiate them."

Later when the Essential/ODS team made changes to the product, ASSET helped them learn how to update the test and develop their own tests using ASSET.

RESULT

"The reduction in the time we had to spend developing tests as well as running tests was a major benefit that ASSET gave us," Knight explained. "It meant a big cost savings for us. Without ASSET we couldn't have diagnosed problems and fixed them as quickly as we were able to. With ASSET, you know almost immediately where a problem is so you can repair it and get the board out quicker."

Knight and his test team thought so highly of ASSET that they required a sister company within Raytheon to use it (CMD, Inc. of Washington, D.C). When a board in the field fails, CMD is shipped the board for testing and repair. CMD uses ASSET to pinpoint the locations of faults.

Ron Romero, test engineer at Essential / ODS, agreed with Knight's assessment of ASSET. "We were able to start testing the system right away because we didn't have to generate tests from scratch. We just reused Raytheon's tests," Romero said. "Later, we changed a few of the parts on some of the boards and we had to be trained to develop our own tests with ASSET. The support we got from the ASSET technical people was outstanding. Now we've implemented boundary scan on some of our other products and it's really helped us get product out the door faster. It's paying off for us."

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