Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
they can implement with their particular design processes. In this chapter, we provide
a DFSS recipe for device verification and validation. Customization is warranted by
an industry segment and by application.
The complexities of risk management and software make it harder for researchers
to uncover deficiencies, and thus, produce fewer defects, faults, and failures. In ad-
dition, because many companies are often under budget pressure and schedule dead-
lines, there is always a motivation to compress that schedule, sacrificing verification
and validation more than any other activities in the development process.
Verification can be performed at all stages of the ICOV DFSS process. The re-
quirement instructs firms to review, inspect, test, check, audit, or otherwise, establish
whether components, subsystems, systems, the final software product, and documents
conform to requirements or design inputs. Typical verification tests may include risk
analysis, integrity testing, testing for conformance to standards, and reliability. Vali-
dation ensures that a software meets defined user needs and intended uses. Validation
includes testing under simulated and/or actual use conditions. Validation is, basically,
the culmination of risk management, the software, and proving the user needs and
intended uses is usually more difficult than verification. As the DFSS team goes up-
stream and links to the abstract world of customer and regulations domains—the vali-
dation domain—things are not in black-and-white, as in the engineering domain—the
verification domain.
Human existence is defined in part by the need for mobility. In modern times,
such need is luxuriated and partially fulfilled by commercial interests of automotive
and aerospace/avionic companies. In the terrestrial and aeronautic forms of personal
and mass transportation, safety is a critical issue. Where human error or negligence
in a real-time setting can result in human fatality on a growing scale, the reliance on
machines to perform basic, repetitive, and critical tasks grows in correlation to the
consumer confidence in that technology. The more a technology's reliability is proven,
the more acceptable and trusted that technology becomes. In systems delivered by
the transportation industry—buses, trains, planes, trucks, automobiles—as well as
in systems that are so remote that humans can play little or no role in control of
those systems such as satellites and space stations, computerized systems become the
control mechanism of choice. In efforts to implement safety and redundancy features
in larger commercial transportation vehicles such as airplanes, this same x-by-wire
(brake by wire, steer by wire, drive-by wire, etc.) concept is now being explored
and implemented in aerospace companies that make or supply avionic systems into a
fly-by-wire paradigm, that is, the proliferation of electronic control by-wire over the
mechanical aspects of the system.
In the critical industries, automobile or aircraft development processes endure
a time to market that is rarely measured in months but instead in years to tens
of years, yet the speed of development and the time to market are every bit as
critical as for small-scale electronics items. Product and process verification and
validation, including end-of-line testing, contribute to longer time to market at the
cost of providing quality assurances that are necessary to product development. In
the industry of small-scale or personal electronics where time-to market literally can
be the life or death of a product, validation, verification, and testing processes are less
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