Save money by buying more equipment: learn how to avoid the pitfalls that can ruin all of the benefits an automated switch can provide.(SWITCHING SYSTEMS)

Budget constraints, personnel cutbacks, and shorter product marketing windows are the signs of the times. This type of working environment demands your operation be lean, mean, and just plain smart with its existing resources. So, how can you justify buying more equipment?

Tremendous thought and planning should go into both in-process and final testing. A key goal should be to use equipment that is already a company asset in a more cost-effective manner. Squeezing the last ounce of efficiency from a test process or actual test equipment is a great step to being more effective in the market place.

Specifying and buying new automated switching to augment your testing may bring your facility to the next level in productivity. Most sophisticated test equipment built in the last 10 years typically has some sort of remote-control interface that can be used to set up the equipment, make measurements, and record the hard data for evaluation.

For communications or telemetry installations, this may be the time to move to a more automated solution, getting away from setting up a test each time it's needed or using manual patch bays and patch cords.

The Warning Signs

Growing companies go through various cycles. Many firms call these growing pains, but with planning and scheduling, these cycles can be properly addressed. The more sophisticated the product being manufactured, the more testing probably needs to be done.

As products become more complex, you don't want your testing process to become a bottleneck. Without automating some or all of your testing, you lose repeatability, reliability, and the speed that test automation provides. Once software control is established for the application, connectivity and results are repeatable without human intervention and error. This saves time and money.

Automated switching isn't rocket science, but it does take some in-depth understanding of the pitfalls that can ruin all of the benefits an automated switch can provide. Poor frequency response, poor isolation, poor switching elements, or even the wrong connector or cable types can contribute to a poorly performing design. …

To read the full text of this article and others like it, subscribe today!