Test sequencing in complex manufacturing systems

Testing complex manufacturing systems, such as an ASML lithographic machine, takes up to 45% of the total development time of a system. The problem of which tests must be executed in what sequence to ensure in the shortest possible test time that the system works, which is the test-sequencing problem, was already solved by Pattipati et al. for the diagnosis of systems during operation. Test-sequencing problems during the development and manufacturing phases of systems, however, require a different approach than the test-sequencing problems during operation. In this paper, the test problem description and algorithms developed by Pattipati et al. are extended to solve test-sequencing problems for the development and manufacturing of manufacturing systems. For a case study in the manufacturing process of an ASML lithographic machine, it is shown that solving a test-sequencing problem with this method can reduce the test time by 15% to 30% compared to experts that solve this problem manually.