Developing a Design for Manufacturability Focus

These first ATO instruments were largely based upon through-hole manufacturing technology. They used some surface mount technology for the high-speed interface connections to customer equipment. The technologies did not present a difficult manufacturing problem and the testing approach was largely of a functional nature, with some external fault diagnostic tools being developed by ATO manufacturing engineering. These tools consisted of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) configurations that could be used to test the large amount of digital interconnect within the product. Shipment volumes were low enough to be handled by a very small production group which outsourced assembly work wherever possible. It is worth noting that the marketing planning, development, and manufacturing design were done concurrently. This led to a relatively short time to market and provided ATO with a sound cultural basis for future concurrent development of new products.