Capturing board-level test requirements in generic formats

Accurate and timely capture of test requirements have long been problems in the test support world. The generation and maintenance of Test Program Sets (TPS) at depot-level test facilities are often hindered by the lack of such documentation, especially when migrating old TPSs to newer Automated Test Systems (ATS). This paper will describe a generic, non-proprietary format for capturing test requirement information for component and board-level test. Demonstration software tools that generate the necessary ATS level information and post-process that information to generate a TPS for multiple Automatic Test Systems are also described. The paper discusses case studies of how the software tools and generic formats are being used to create test programs for two different printed circuit boards on two different ATSs