If you work in the semiconductor industry (or any industry where extensive testing is performed on products), then reducing test time is a major component to reducing operational costs for manufacturing. Semiconductor test time is expensive, and projected to increase, contributing a significant amount to the total manufacturing cost of a semiconductor device. Reducing test time will translate into large savings, especially for high volume and complex products.
While there is specialized software available to accomplish this task, I wanted to demonstrate how it could be performed in JMP using a custom add-in. Add-ins allow users to extend the functionality of what JMP can do out of the box into custom applications. This is accomplished through JMP scripting and with it, you can create any type of customized functionality. To install this add-in, download the .jmpaddin file along with the two sample .jmp files and open the .jmpaddin file with JMP (File > Open). Opening the .jmpaddin file with JMP will install it and the add-in will be accessible from JMP's Add-Ins menu.
This add-in requires two sets of data: run-on-error (ROE) test data and test time data in the .jmp data table format. Run-on-error is required so that the optimizer add-in can determine which tests have overlapping test coverage, and use that, combined with the test times, to determine the optimal test order. This optimization will not work with stop-on-fail test data. The attached .jmp files to this blog are examples of the format required for the ROE and test time data tables. (Note: the ROE data needs to have values of 1 representing a test fail and 0 representing a test pass and each row is a different unit being tested).
Read my Test Time Optimization blog to see how I used the .jmp files with the add-in. If you have questions about the test time optimizer add-in, please comment below or contact me through email (mark.zwald@jmp.com).
