The Yield of Test Outsourcing

Many ways to outsource test activities has been explored, especially in these last troubled years. Often subcontractors have been employed to design portion of devices or entire circuits. Often we also discovered that transferring DFT and test methodologies outside the originating company is critical indeed. The efficiency of test development, and also the quality of product test can be affected. Reaching the target coverage is not the only problem. Define how exchange test data and defining the handoff step in the flow is another crucial issue. Similar problems arise also when outsourcing concerns the ATE test program development. In such cases the risk is loosing the possibility to gain important expertise and skills, for example, concerning critical technology-dependant features of the device.