Hi,
I need some help and/or insights on how to manage a production test floor. Anything helpful will be appreciated!
Situation is this (numbers are just for illustration):
- 10 identical test stations with mass interconnect receiver to have good reusability of standard T&M equipment.
- 15 unique test adapters with their corresponding test applications.
- Some test adapters have more than one duplicate to parallelize test process on multiple stations when needed.
- any test can be deployed on any station or multiple stations.
- some stations are stored as a backup.
- All stations have PXI chassis with both NI and 3rd party devices, and other devices that are controlled through VISA.
- We develop tests in such a way that root folder could be simply copied to identically configured station without using Deployment tool.
- We have a centralized versioning system where latest software releases are kept.
- Test are developed using TestStand, LabView and multiple other SW tools.
And then there are these issues:
- Test application is updated with new limits (external limit file/db).
- Test sequence is changed with new logic.
- 1 and 2 can happen either off manufacturing on a development system or as an emergency fix on a station that is currently testing.
- in 1-3 cases changes have to reach all affected stations at some point.
- It must be ensured that production is not using an old version of test application (e.g. a station from storage is retrieved that has an old software on it).
- It is not practical to manually go through all 10 (make it 50 or 100) stations whenever change occurs, because some stations are just a redundant hardware.
Are there any existing NI or 3rd party tools or solutions to manage this? Basically what I need is a way of controlling changes and delivering them to multiple test station. Knowing what station has what configuration is a must. Everything can be done manually (checking, deploying, book keeping, etc.) using spreadsheets, but manual work is error prone.
Is there an industry standard good practice or practices for this?
Thanks!