Addressing Product Quality and Performance With Effective Test Methods (.PDF Download)
When it comes to ensuring that a product meets the standards established for performance, reliability, and safety, how well that compliance testing is performed directly impacts the product’s eventual success or failure in the field. Production test is an aspect of the true value-add and where the real mission to create a good product occurs. To talk about designing, developing, making, and fielding a product, we reached out to Daniel Knighten of Audio Precision, who does a lot of testing of consumer and commercial acoustic devices.
EE: Okay, now, I have an idea, I'm designing it. I’ve got to test it during design. There are issues involved at that stage. I've got to make sure that it gets manufactured properly. First, the design, depending on how you look at it, it's either one or two stages. In a modern world, I'm designing in a design simulation software and then I'm building a hardware prototype, making two stages of design. I'm doing my software simulation, and then I'm doing my hardware prototyping and then I'm manufacturing. Each of those has separate requirements.
Daniel Knighten: It starts at the very beginning. There’s a very real issue for everybody designing a device today, regardless of what kind of devices they are. There are companies, whose fundamental selling proposition is, "Hey, do you want to build a smart speaker? Have we got a chipset for you? Buy our chipset. Follow our design guide. Here, we're going to give you schematics, and gerbers and such, and you can just do this."