Customer
The customer is a leading Austrian-based provider of integrated test and measurement solutions for the automotive industry with a staff of more than 6,000 people and facilities in 28 countries worldwide.

 

Challenge
Modern testbed system consists of a variety of measuring devices with multiple configuration options. Every particular test procedure may require the use of a subset of measuring instruments with specific settings. As a result, the substantial part of expensive testbed time is used for tests preparations, the configuration process requires the participation of the high-qualified specialists.

In order to reduce the configuration time, the customer requested to optimize the hardware configuration routine maximally.

 

Solution
For the definition of device integration conventions Applied Systems specialists teamed with the customer engineers from several device development departments. Together we defined the necessary conventions, interfaces, and data formats. That allowed the test automation system to recognize connected devices, incorporate the device parameters, and specialized control panels.

Applied Systems team had to implement all the defined conventions. The additional challenge was to guarantee the migration process. The customer could not immediately support the new standard in all the legacy instruments. So the manual configuration process had to work in parallel.

The toolset implementation was synchronized with the development in customer device teams. The joined tests during intermediate integration points helped to identify the gaps in initial requirements.

Applied Systems team provided the verification procedure, which allows ensuring the compliance of the devices to agreed conventions. In order to reduce a time for problem resolution, we provided diagnostics tools that allow resolving configuration issues quickly.

 

Key benefits:

• Saving effort on the device configuration routine;
• Increasing the productive time of the testbed;
• Supporting the migration process for legacy devices;
• Reducing personnel training costs. 

 

Results
The implemented configuration toolset provides a possibility for the integration of all currently available and future customer instruments. The easy-to-use user interface allows configuring devices for new tests with few mouse clicks.

 

Results at a glance:

• Up to 50% reduction in device setup time;
• Increase equipment uptime by up to 40%;
• Reduce personnel training costs by up to 50%.