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execute TPS verification/acceptance testing, accumulate all
necessary design review results, and inspect reports and quality conformance data, as evidence of satisfying contractual
requirements.
The development of a quality control plan is the first step in
the QA process. The plans describe the tasks and approaches
to be taken necessary to ensure that the test program software,
hardware, and documentation will satisfy the support requirements of the prime equipment and the ATS. They indicate the
planning, organization, direction, and control necessary to
carry out each task. Each plan, when developed, will be submitted to the customer or government for approval. Plans
should be kept current by revisions, supplements, alerts, or
bulletins, as necessary throughout the life of the project. Fig.
1 illustrates a typical quality flow used during development
of a TPS.

Test Program Set Development/Control
Plan
The TPS development/control plan should be developed
to define, describe, and schedule those activities and disciplines to be used for the design, development, review,
control, and production of the TPS. This control plan is
required and used as the basic planning and guidance
document directing all TPS development and production
activities.
A phase-gate process is often used to highlight the contractual requirements, key TPS development activities, and
milestones associated with TPS development, production, and
delivery [4]. This enables management to effectively review,
monitor, and control all activities of the test program development task. Fig. 2 illustrates an example of a phased state
approach to a TPS Development Control Plan.
The TPS Development/Control Plan should:
◗◗ Correlate the program scheduling with the next higherlevel system milestones;
◗◗ Identify customer responsibilities;
◗◗ Identify the intended user of the TPS (technician, soldier);
◗◗ Incorporate the Level of Repair Analysis (LORA);
◗◗ Identify and describe, in detail, all management control
vehicles to be used during TPS development and production to ensure the milestones projected in the TPS
Development/Control Plan as the costs associated can
be achieved;
◗◗ Identify and describe all technical procedures and plans
to be employed during development and production;
◗◗ Identify any potential risks associated with development;
◗◗ Describe the design, fabrication, and testing features of
all interface devices in enough detail to ensure that the
reliability, maintainability, and functional requirements
will be met;
◗◗ Identify and describe logistic requirements for deliverable items; and
◗◗ Identify and describe customer furnished equipment
required to develop, integrate, and deliver the TPS
production copies.
12

Concept Review - Phase A
The concept review is conducted to evaluate the proposed
test strategy developed by the test engineers prior to the development of detailed test design data. At this stage the test
designer will have formulated the optimum automatic fault
detection and isolation strategy based on the UUT testability,
level of repair desired, and the conceptual end-to-end performance testing requirements. This will be done, while keeping
the capabilities of the intended user of the TPS in mind. The operational acceptability of the TPS will also be addressed at this
stage. Estimates of setup, run time, teardown, and human engineering aspects of the TPS will be provided. Customer QA
personnel also participate in an advisory capacity, helping
where interpretation of contractual requirements is necessary
and, in general, increasing their understanding of the developer's approach to the development of the TPS. The customer's
early participation and close coordination will help establish whether the developer can deliver a TPS that will comply
with customer quality requirements throughout its life. The
customer's participation in this review, the test design data
review, debugging and integration, and acceptance testing
phases, as described in the remaining paragraphs, will ensure
high customer confidence that the delivered TPS will be acceptable and that it will be unnecessary to perform extensive
and costly fault-insertion tests.
Upon approval from the concept review by the customer,
the developer is authorized to proceed with the detailed UUT
Test Design Data (TDD). The detailed TDD will contain all
the sequences of tests, test setups, adjustments, test limits,
response tolerances, and man-machine communications, together with performance and diagnostic flow charts, detailed
ATS/UUT interconnection diagrams, and a description of
each test. The TDD can be in a variety of formats, whether dictated by the customer or developer. This format can be in a text
or flowchart format.

TPS Detailed Design Review - Phase B
The second major review checks the TDD's technical content,
flow, completeness, and readiness for coding. A selected group
of faults should be analyzed by proceeding through the test
sequences, step-by-step, to verify that each fault has been detected and correctly isolated. Enough faults should be traced
through the test sequences to provide confidence that the contractual fault detection and isolation requirements will be met.
If analysis proves fault detection is insufficient, rework and a
second design review will be required. Interface Device (ID)
design at this stage will be complete, as will the technical and
economic justifications for the number of proposed IDs and
any required cables. The proposed ID schemes such as internal or external wrap-around functions and self-tests for the ID
and the cables should also be completed by this phase. Customer QA will review the ID related data for accuracy and
completeness and will seek to minimize the total number of
IDs by using the same ID for similar UUTs where such use is
warranted by UUT characteristic similarities and can be justified economically.

IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine

August 2020

Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-5

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-5