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TAPPING IN |
EMS firm finds that ScanWorks pays for itself by saving "money, time and company resources"
The ScanWorks JTAG system reduced troubleshooting time by 1,457 percent!
Because of the nature of its business, Reptron Manufacturing Services, an electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company headquartered in Tampa, Fla., had to be certain that its investment in boundary-scan test equipment would not only generate a healthy return on investment, but it would do so over a very short period of time. The firm found its solution in ASSET's ScanWorks boundary-scan test and in-system programming environment.
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The test engineering management at Reptron, which has a major manufacturing facility in Hibbing, Min., understood that most electronic test techniques for complex assemblies would involve expensive fixturing and tooling costs, as well as long test development cycles. And, as an EMS company, Reptron faced relatively short life spans for the products it manufactured. Moreover, many of the printed circuit boards (PCB) it assembled had limited physical access for testing purposes.
The difficulties faced by Reptron led the firm's test engineers to spend an extraordinary amount of time troubleshooting and debugging PCBs. As a result, the firm was led to investigate boundary scan test technologies, including ASSET's ScanWorks environment. To verify that ScanWorks would have a rapid ROI, Reptron applied JTAG test and troubleshooting methods on two PCBs as part of a case study scenario. The results, summarized below, were quite convincing.
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| Table 1 -- Reptron's ROI for ScanWorks |
Without Boundary Scan |
With
Boundary Scan |
Savings |
| Total Test Time |
438.0 hours |
28.7 hours |
409.3 hours |
| Total Test/Repair costs |
$32,850.00 |
$2149.50 |
$30,700.50 |
Test/Repair Costs per assembly
Case 1
Case 2
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$606.12
$630.00
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$38.52
$5.36
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$567.60
$624.64
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The report compiled as a result of Reptron's two case studies states: "The ScanWorks test platform allowed us to interactively debug and diagnose failures that would normally only be detected on an in-circuit tester: open pins and traces, solder and copper shorts, defects under ball-grid ICs, and defective, wrong, or missing components. The boundary scan testing approach provided a mechanism to actively control signal levels independent of system clocking for purposes of debugging: this functionality is an extremely powerful feature of the system."
To read Reptron’s own evaluation of ScanWorks, click here.
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