The economics of operator participation in automatic testing

After briefly considering some of the factors which should be considered when installing automatic test equipment, the paper gives detailed consideration to ways in which the degree and nature of operator participation affects the cost of operation. The area of machine interface is significant and a field test console developed for testing of Army radio equipment is quoted as an example where a well designed interface significantly reduces the overall test time, lowers the level of skill required to operate the equipment and generally increases the integrity of testing.