A multi-objective test vs. cost optimization for electronic products

Both cost and quality are important features when manufacturing high performance electronics. Unfortunately, the two design goals, (low) cost and (high) quality, are usually somewhat mutually exclusive. High testing effort (and thus quality) comes with a considerable cost, and sparing the test has significant impact on the delivered quality. In this paper, we present a new structured search method to obtain the best combination of these two goals. It features a graphical oriented cost/quality modeling approach and uses a Pareto chart to visualize the results. The search for the Pareto-optimal points is done by means of a genetic algorithm. With our method, we optimize a manufacturing process for a global positioning system (GPS) front end, clearly outperforming a standard fabrication set-up