Test Software: What Should Be Standardized and What Should Remain Individual?

Standardization initially sounds like a straightforward goal: the more test systems follow the same rules, the easier they are to develop, operate, and maintain.

In practice, the challenge lies elsewhere. Electronics testing is shaped by specific products, measurement tasks, and production conditions. This is exactly where technically meaningful and sometimes unavoidable differences arise. A good test strategy therefore does not aim to make everything as uniform as possible. Instead, it deliberately decides where differences actually provide value.

Individuality is useful where the task itself is individual. In many other areas, it primarily creates additional effort.

Every Test Task Has Its Own Core

A control unit has different requirements from an assembly with high-frequency signals. A functional test follows a different logic from a simple electrical end-of-line test. Devices under test differ in their interfaces, measurement points, limits, contacting methods, and test depth.

These differences are part of the actual engineering task. This is where a test solution needs to provide room for the specific product.

The test sequence itself may also be highly specific. Which measurements are required, in which order they are performed, which instruments are used, and how the system reacts to certain results all depend on the task at hand.

Trying to standardize this level too rigidly often only shifts the complexity elsewhere. Workarounds, special rules, and additional structures are then needed to force the real task into a framework that is too restrictive.

The more interesting question therefore begins one level above.

How Individual Does the Surrounding Infrastructure Really Need to Be?

A test program needs measurement instruments and limits. It produces results. It requires product and order information, has to handle errors, store data, and often communicate with higher-level systems.

These tasks repeat.

Even so, they are frequently solved from scratch in mature test environments. One project gets its own result storage mechanism, another uses a different approach to instrument integration. A new station receives an additional interface. Product variants may be managed through configuration files in one project and directly in program code in another.

Each individual decision may have been perfectly reasonable on its own. Over the years, however, this creates an environment in which increasing amounts of knowledge become tied to individual projects, stations, or people.

This often remains manageable for a long time. Problems usually become apparent when changes affect several of these solutions at once. New operating systems, changed data requirements, additional product variants, or new interfaces then have to be addressed individually in many different places.

Technical freedom can gradually turn into a maintenance problem.

This is where standardization offers its greatest leverage.

Standardize What Repeats

Functions that are required by many test applications and address well-understood recurring problems are particularly suitable for standardization.

Examples include management of test projects and variants, instrument integration, user and permission concepts, result databases, traceability, logging, interfaces to production systems, as well as mechanisms for distribution, replication, and analysis.

The development process itself can also be standardized. When test programs follow a common structure, developers use the same tools, and recurring tasks are handled through defined functions, a shared technical vocabulary emerges.

The benefits go far beyond saving development time.

An engineer can understand an unfamiliar project more quickly. Changes follow known patterns. Functions that have already been implemented robustly do not need to be recreated for every new test station. Improvements to the shared foundation can benefit multiple systems.

A collection of individual test solutions gradually becomes a manageable test environment.

Standardization Also Makes Modernization Easier

This effect becomes particularly visible when an existing test environment needs to evolve.

As long as every project brings its own data storage, instrument integration, or process control, every modernization effort also has to address many different areas individually. Even comparatively small technical changes can then affect several projects at the same time.

A shared platform moves recurring tasks into a stable core. Test programs can then build on common infrastructure while retaining their product-specific logic.

This is particularly relevant for existing systems. Modernization does not necessarily require a complete replacement. Existing measurement instruments, adapters, and mechanical components can remain in use while software structures are standardized step by step.

With multiple test projects or stations, this transition can be carried out gradually. Individual projects are migrated, tested, and then rolled out. Standardization therefore becomes one of the prerequisites for keeping future changes manageable.

Standardization Does Not End at the Hardware Level

With existing systems in particular, it is easy to assume that a common software foundation requires largely identical hardware.

For test systems, this would often be unrealistic. Measurement instruments have different life cycles. Adapters are product-specific. Some systems use PXI or CompactPCI hardware, while others rely on conventional benchtop instruments, proprietary hardware, or combinations that have evolved over many years.

A sustainable standardization approach must be able to accommodate these differences.

The common denominator is therefore often found in the software architecture: instruments are integrated through defined interfaces, test sequences follow the same structure, and results are stored in shared data structures. Below this level, the actual technical implementation can remain different.

An older system with existing measurement equipment can therefore operate according to the same principles as a newly built system with current hardware.

The standard creates consistency precisely because it allows differences where they are required.

Processes Also Need Flexibility

The same applies to production processes.

A manual test station operates differently from a fully automated line. One system may receive its job information through a barcode, while another gets it from an MES. At one station, an operator selects the product variant; at another, this information comes entirely from the production control system.

A shared platform should not force these processes into an artificial uniformity. Reusable building blocks and defined interfaces are more useful, allowing the specific process to be assembled from known components.

This moves individualization to the appropriate level: the process itself can remain individual while its technical building blocks stay familiar.

The Key Distinction Is Between Configuration and Custom Development

A good indication of the quality of a standard is the way new requirements are implemented.

If every deviation requires changes to the shared software, the standard itself quickly becomes a bottleneck. If differences can be represented through projects, configuration, plugins, interfaces, or clearly defined extension points, the common foundation can remain stable.

A standard does not need to anticipate every future use case. It needs an architecture in which new use cases can find an appropriate place.

Over many years, this characteristic determines whether standardization continues to reduce effort or eventually becomes another complex, organically grown structure.

What Should a Platform Already Provide?

This also turns the question of standardization into a question of platform selection.

The more fundamental functions are already available in a stable form, the less infrastructure has to be developed and maintained separately within each individual project.

What matters, therefore, is not only the ability to write a test program. Equally important are ready-made structures for data management, variants, instrument integration, user administration, traceability, development workflows, distribution, and interfaces to other systems.

At the same time, the platform must provide enough room for project-specific requirements.

A sound selection decision therefore considers both sides: Which tasks should be permanently removed from individual projects, and where must the solution remain open to individual requirements?

For test systems with long service lives, this balance is often more important than the question of which individual feature can be implemented faster in the short term.

Not Every Form of Standardization Is Worthwhile

Standardization also requires effort. Shared solutions have to be developed, maintained, documented, and kept stable across different use cases.

A standard is therefore most valuable where functions occur repeatedly, multiple systems benefit from them, or long-term dependencies are created.

A one-off special measurement can remain special. An unusual adapter does not need to follow a company-wide standard if there is no benefit in doing so. A product-specific calculation may belong exactly where it is: in that one test project.

The situation is different for functions required by every system. If result management, user permissions, or instrument communication are being developed individually for the fifth time, the main question is no longer whether the task can be solved. The more relevant question is why it needs to be solved yet again.

A useful guideline is therefore:

Anything that has to be developed, maintained, or explained repeatedly across multiple test projects is a candidate for standardization. Anything that arises directly from the product, measurement method, or production process should deliberately retain room for individuality.

A Stable Core with Flexible Edges

In the end, the boundary between standardization and individuality is defined less by individual technologies than by their role within the overall system.

The standard forms the stable core: recurring functions, shared structures, defined interfaces, and tools that projects can rely on.

Individuality remains closer to the specific task: the device under test, the measurement method, process-specific characteristics, and special requirements.

Such a separation does not eliminate differences. It gives them structure.

And that is the real value of a standardized test platform: it ensures that individual development effort is focused where it actually creates a technical difference.