The optimum design of a test system, integration, software development, and ensuring it meets end customer’s needs requires a dedicated team. End customers choose vendors who have complete design and delivery capability instead of bits and pieces.

The electronics industry ecosystem in India has witnessed sweeping changes in the last few years. Whether it is the wireless industry or aerospace/defense or consumer electronics or IoT, the ecosystem has grown to have local design, validation, and manufacturing capability.

The Central government vision is to exceed the previous target of $300 billion of electronics manufacturing and exports by 2025-26. The startup culture in this ecosystem has evolved from software-centric to hardware design and production. Central government’s Make in India drive has given a boost to local design and manufacturing.

The test requirements for design and manufacturing evolve and need optimisation to save cost to be competitive. People at these roles understand their requirement of testing, but many times they lack the test system design and configuration knowledge. Earlier these engineers and managers assumed or believed what the test equipment provider suggested; many times it was over engineered that added to the cost of test.

Vendors providing test equipment need to scale up their skill sets to understand the pain points of customers in design and manufacturing and provide a complete solution. It includes equipment, fixturing, switching (RF and DC), wiring, racking, test software development and optimisation, and ERP connectivity.

For manufacturing, the OEM or the EMS companies set up assembly lines based on volume. For line balancing, each stage of manufacturing needs to be designed so that the product moves along the assembly line at the right speed to optimise the flow.