Proto tests — Design engineer’s tool for test management
Proto tests. Proto test is physical prototype test management. Every single physical product development process has countless hours of iterations with different configurations and specifications.
It is the direct result of my frustration with dealing with design prototype testing and managing results. Engineers, especially mechanical engineers in the design field, use CAD and analysis software daily. Most of this software is still a desktop version individually installed on the computer, so they are “Okay” to use other tools as the desktop version and not bother about cloud or saas (Software-as-a-service) tools. But it really affects productivity and communication between design engineers, test engineers (or technicians) and all the people involved with the successful testing of the prototype.
Here are the reasons proto tests will be an important tool for design engineers:
- Increase productivity and efficiency of the product development team
With the rise of crowdfunding, it’s easy to develop a product with a small amount of capital. Every startup team generally has highly motivated, hardworking and different but integrating skill set individuals.
Most of the engineers still record results in an excel spreadsheet for all kinds of analysis. There are multiples of the spreadsheet for every single prototype specification, test etc. So at an early stage of your startup, you don’t want to waste time digging through spreadsheet jungle to figuring out the correct results.
2. Organize test request workflow based on your organization structure and requirement
A small startup has a design engineer who also has the role of test engineer to design the product successfully. But for a bigger organization, testing of prototype and design has to communicate with multiple people with the workflow and permission structure to allocate resources for a particular test. Proto tests will solve this issue of priority of tests.
3. Export results in PDF & Microsoft Excel format
As everyone knows, engineers and financial guys love Excel. Microsoft Excel is a great tool, and almost every company uses it to the full extent. For creating a report, PDF is the standard format, at least in the engineering industry. Proto tests allow you to easily export data in excel format while reports in PDF formation.
4. Easy documentation for SR&ED (Scientific Research and Experimental Development) and US R&D (Research and Experimentation) tax credit purposes.
US and Canadian governments allow billions of dollars of tax credit to stay ahead of the race in innovation. So getting that tax credit company have to keep the record of documentation for the project such as,
project planning documents, records of resources allocated to the project, timesheets, design of experiments, project records, laboratory notebooks, Design system architecture and source code, records of trial runs, progress reports, minutes of project meetings, test protocols, test data, analysis of test results, conclusions, photographs and videos, samples, prototypes, scrap and other artifacts, contracts and others.
Check out proto tests to know more about how this tool can help you perform your job better!
