Planning Tomorrow's Test Data Today Simple Tips for Future-Proofing Your Test Data

The complexity and volume for manufacturing and engineering test data in modern electronics manufacturing is growing every year. The proliferation of formats and structures of data means that test data storage, retrieval and analysis becomes increasingly difficult. Each silo of test data (like subcomponent Supply, R&D, RMA, Manufacturing, and Repair) has different parameters, attributes, and testing procedures than the others. In addition, each business unit within an organization may have different procedures, testing nomenclature, and processes than other business units even if they're making the same products. Question: With these challenges in mind, if you were asked to choose a way to store your data for the next 30 years and make it usable and integrated with enterprise data, how would you do it? And with smart sensors expected to heavily impact manufacturing [1], how will you be able to gather additional product testing data and make it integrate with legacy data? In this paper and discussion, we'll talk about the available technologies and file formats that Test Engineers should consider when preparing to write out test data from complex manufacturing and engineering test beds. By storing and structuring your test data with the best practices discussed in this discussion track, you'll be able to do efficiently store, quickly analyze, and futureproof your test output to work with other enterprise data.