Functional testing (manufacturing)

Last updated

In manufacturing, functional testing (FCT) is performed during the last phase of the production line. [1] This is often referred to as a final quality control test, which is done to ensure that specifications are carried out by FCTs.

Contents

The process of FCTs is entailed by the emulation or simulation of the environment in which a product is expected to operate. This is done so to check, and correct any issues with functionality. The environment involved with FCTs consists of any device that communicates with an DUT, the power supply of said DUT, and any loads needed to make the DUT function correctly.

Functional tests are performed in an automatic fashion by production line operators using test software. In order for this to be completed, the software will communicate with any external programmable instruments such as I/O boards, digital multimeters, and communication ports. In conjunction with the test fixture, the software that interfaces with the DUT is what makes it possible for a FCT to be performed.

Typical vendors

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acceptance testing</span> Test to determine if the requirements of a specification or contract are met

In engineering and its various subdisciplines, acceptance testing is a test conducted to determine if the requirements of a specification or contract are met. It may involve chemical tests, physical tests, or performance tests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Software testing</span> Checking software against a standard

Software testing is the act of checking whether software satisfies expectations.

Regression testing is re-running functional and non-functional tests to ensure that previously developed and tested software still performs as expected after a change. If not, that would be called a regression.

In software quality assurance, performance testing is in general a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.

A sanity check or sanity test is a basic test to quickly evaluate whether a claim or the result of a calculation can possibly be true. It is a simple check to see if the produced material is rational. The point of a sanity test is to rule out certain classes of obviously false results, not to catch every possible error. A rule-of-thumb or back-of-the-envelope calculation may be checked to perform the test. The advantage of performing an initial sanity test is that of speedily evaluating basic function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electromagnetic compatibility</span> Electrical engineering concept

Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is the ability of electrical equipment and systems to function acceptably in their electromagnetic environment, by limiting the unintentional generation, propagation and reception of electromagnetic energy which may cause unwanted effects such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) or even physical damage to operational equipment. The goal of EMC is the correct operation of different equipment in a common electromagnetic environment. It is also the name given to the associated branch of electrical engineering.

Unit testing, a.k.a. component or module testing, is a form of software testing by which isolated source code is tested to validate expected behavior.

Execution in computer and software engineering is the process by which a computer or virtual machine interprets and acts on the instructions of a computer program. Each instruction of a program is a description of a particular action which must be carried out, in order for a specific problem to be solved. Execution involves repeatedly following a "fetch–decode–execute" cycle for each instruction done by control unit. As the executing machine follows the instructions, specific effects are produced in accordance with the semantics of those instructions.

White-box testing is a method of software testing that tests internal structures or workings of an application, as opposed to its functionality. In white-box testing, an internal perspective of the system is used to design test cases. The tester chooses inputs to exercise paths through the code and determine the expected outputs. This is analogous to testing nodes in a circuit, e.g. in-circuit testing (ICT). White-box testing can be applied at the unit, integration and system levels of the software testing process. Although traditional testers tended to think of white-box testing as being done at the unit level, it is used for integration and system testing more frequently today. It can test paths within a unit, paths between units during integration, and between subsystems during a system–level test. Though this method of test design can uncover many errors or problems, it has the potential to miss unimplemented parts of the specification or missing requirements. Where white-box testing is design-driven, that is, driven exclusively by agreed specifications of how each component of software is required to behave, white-box test techniques can accomplish assessment for unimplemented or missing requirements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Automatic test equipment</span> Apparatus used in hardware testing that carries out a series of tests automatically

Automatic test equipment or automated test equipment (ATE) is any apparatus that performs tests on a device, known as the device under test (DUT), equipment under test (EUT) or unit under test (UUT), using automation to quickly perform measurements and evaluate the test results. An ATE can be a simple computer-controlled digital multimeter, or a complicated system containing dozens of complex test instruments capable of automatically testing and diagnosing faults in sophisticated electronic packaged parts or on wafer testing, including system on chips and integrated circuits.

Software project management is the process of planning and leading software projects. It is a sub-discipline of project management in which software projects are planned, implemented, monitored and controlled.

A test bench or testing workbench is an environment used to verify the correctness or soundness of a design or model.

In-circuit testing (ICT) is an example of white box testing where an electrical probe tests a populated printed circuit board (PCB), checking for shorts, opens, resistance, capacitance, and other basic quantities which will show whether the assembly was correctly fabricated. It may be performed with a "bed of nails" test fixture and specialist test equipment, or with a fixtureless in-circuit test setup.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Construction and Analysis of Distributed Processes</span>

CADP is a toolbox for the design of communication protocols and distributed systems. CADP is developed by the CONVECS team at INRIA Rhone-Alpes and connected to various complementary tools. CADP is maintained, regularly improved, and used in many industrial projects.

Functional safety is the part of the overall safety of a system or piece of equipment that depends on automatic protection operating correctly in response to its inputs or failure in a predictable manner (fail-safe). The automatic protection system should be designed to properly handle likely systematic errors, hardware failures and operational/environmental stress.

iSCSI conformance testing is testing to determine whether an iSCSI Initiator/Target meets the iSCSI standard.

Circuit Check is an American company with about 225 employees and seven direct operations in six countries. Headquartered in Maple Grove, Minnesota, it is one of the largest manufacturers of electronic and mechanical test fixtures in North America, . The company also manufactures Automatic Test Equipment for end-of-line manufacturing test. The company uses either a Microsoft Excel-driven "CCITest" software platform, or the National Instruments LabVIEW software platform. They have a variety of clients in different industries which include: Automotive, Military & Aerospace, Medical, Industrial, and Computer Networking.

The Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) is an application protocol for communication between Electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and a central management system, also known as a charging station network, similar to cell phones and cell phone networks. The original version was written by Joury de Reuver and Franc Buve.

In software deployment, an environment or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. In simple cases, such as developing and immediately executing a program on the same machine, there may be a single environment, but in industrial use, the development environment and production environment are separated, often with several stages in between. This structured release management process allows phased deployment (rollout), testing, and rollback in case of problems.

This article discusses a set of tactics useful in software testing. It is intended as a comprehensive list of tactical approaches to Software Quality Assurance (more widely colloquially known as Quality Assurance and general application of the test method.

References

  1. "Note UK". 15 April 2016.