Hardware Validation Heirarchy

Overview of testing milestones for developing complex hardware. This would be for something with many PCBA, modules or devices that integrate into a larger system and several to many team members. Validating systems does not always require this many steps. It can be time consuming. But if hardware is rare (in quantity) or is very expensive it might be worth injecting caution into the project.

IQC

• Definition: Incoming Quality Control
  Incoming hardware is inspected for:
  • manufacturing defect
  • safety or handling issue
• Setting: Lab
• Responsible: Eng team

Functional Bringup

• Definition: Basic evaluation of essential functionality. The goal of this step is not to evaluate the performance of hardware in any depth. This step is primarily for verifying gross design or safety issue before distribution to the team. Typically more than one engineer or person needs access to hardware. This is the gating step which ensures that hardware is safe and is actually usable.
  Evaluate the hardware for:
  • function; provide workaround or disable if there is an issue
  • safety or handling issue
• Setting: Lab
• Responsible: Eng team

Functional Validation

• Definition: Detailed validation and test plan execution for all functional blocks. Each module is evaluated as a stand-alone unit. Interfaces to other modules are evaluated.
• Setting: Lab
• Responsible: Eng team

Product Integration

• Definition: Testing that requires full product assembly. If the system contains multiple products or has a hierarchy of modules you need to integrate those modules first and execute a test plan verifying this level of the system functions correctly. For example you would integrate the satellite hardware and the ground station separately before verifying they function together. This often includes testing interfaces between modules. But mostly it includes reliability testing, environmental testing and compliance testing.
• Setting: Lab
• Responsible: Eng team

System Integration

• Definition: Validation of a fully integrated system along with all of its required features and performance requirements.
• Setting: Lab
• Responsible: Eng team

Field Trials

• Definition: Evaluation of the new product in actual situations of use. Replicating the customer environment before delivery to the customer. Most or all the work so far has been in the lab or on the bench. Once you have confidence around the systems function and performance it's time to put the device in its actual operating environment. This would be a semi-controlled environment but not is controlled or predictable as a lab. This is an opportunity to collect and scale validation data before introducing customers to the hardware and to ensure the product is robust.
• Setting: Limited, fixed installs in environment
• Responsible: Eng team, Field Ops team

Limited Deployment

• Definition: Small scale trials of system in customer environment. The last two steps involve the customer. Limited deployment means delivering a very small quantity of hardware to the customer but still being very involved. It involves training, being onsite and monitoring. Field operations should be up and running at this step.
• Setting: Customer environment
• Responsible: Field Ops team, Eng team

Full Deployment

• Definition: Full scale deployment of system. The final step involves full delivery of the hardware to the customer. It may or may not involve direct involvement or monitoring of the hardware. Field operations should be fully set up at this point to handle issues, questions, failures, etc.
• Setting: Customer environment
• Responsible: Field Ops team