A new test-generation methodology for system-level verification of production processes

Abstract

The continuing growth in the complexity of production processes is driven mainly by the integration of smart and cheap devices, such as sensors and custom hardware or software components. This naturally leads to higher complexity in fault detection and management, and, therefore to a higher demand for sophisticated quality control tools. A production process is commonly modeled prior to its physical construction to enable early testing. Many simulation platforms were developed to assess the widely varying aspects of the production process, including physical behavior, hardware-software functionality, and performance. However, the efficacy of simulation for the verification of modeled processes is still largely limited by manual operation and observation. We propose a massive random-biased, ontology-based, test-generation methodology for system-level verification of production processes. The methodology has been successfully applied for simulation-based processor hardware verification and proved to be a cost-effective solution. We show that it can be similarly beneficial in the verification of production processes and control. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.