Consolidating test resources for avionics production test - requirements and applications

The manufacturing and test of avionics products for military and commercial aircraft presents a unique set of requirements and challenges. Historically, the development and deployment of production test systems for avionics products such as aircraft data acquisition and recording systems, navigation and communication products, and aircraft network systems have been addressed on a product specific basis - resulting in a variety of test platforms and solutions with little test system commonality and technology. Additionally, this lack of test system commonality and the requirement to maintain legacy products with long product life cycles results in increased maintenance and logistics costs for manufacturing and support test. Consequently, the adoption of a common test platform can offer producers of avionics products lower test costs, improved test resource utilization, and the flexibility to support both new and legacy products. This paper reviews the requirements and the implementation of a common test platform and environment that offers a high level of efficiency, supports the implementation of routine test processes, offers reusability, and allows the consolidation of test resources to facilitate the collection of reliability data and test results.