Customer: German elevator company with manufacturing facility in Brazil
Problem: New electronic cards are assembled by third party
companies and shipped to elevator manufacturer in the south of Brazil. The end
of production test carried out by the automatic test equipment (ATE) is slow
and gives little information about the fault location if PCB fails the test. Operators
have to follow traditional work instructions and instrumentation (PSU, scopes,
multimeter) which is time-consuming and ineffective. The test area became
a bottleneck and PCBs are being scrapped when faults are not found quickly. Similar
problems being faced by manufacturer's offices in Chile, Argentina and Mexico
which rely on R&D team in Brazil for advice.
Solution: ABI
distributor showed how the existing process could be replaced by SYSTEM 8 Modules and TestFlow. ABI introduced the following
scenario to be implemented at the third party PCB manufacturer (CEM):
- ABI hardware (BoardMaster) could be connected to an interface card (designed by mfr) populated with relays that would switch on/off according to logic patters output by the ATM module
- The interface card would be linked to other modules (eg. AMS, MIS 4, VPS) and a test fixture (bed of nails) developed for most critical PCB designs
- A sequence including Power Off/ Power On tests was set up using TestFlow Manager
- A detailed report would be generated including any fault information. The report would be submitted to the R&D for analysis and operators could run a component level test to troubleshoot most expensive PCBs
- This setup could also be put in place by other elevator plants in Latin America
Outcome: A group
of 5 test engineers evaluated the proposal from ABI and presented the project
to the company's directors. An initial investment was approved and the order
has been placed with ABI.
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