Alex Backus
VP, Strategic Development-ATS
VI Technology
In 1991, after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with a BS degree in Electrical Engineering, Alex Backus founded VI Technology to develop software drivers for measurement instruments. Alex quickly shifted the company’s focus towards developing enterprise-wide automated baseband test solutions. Under Alex’s leadership as Chief Executive Officer, VI Technology grew to over 50 employees and 3 branch locations in Austin, Dallas, and San Jose by 2000. In 2009, Aeroflex acquired VI Technology to expand its overall communications test capabilities. As Vice President of Strategic Development, Alex continues to work with the VI Technology sales team on key Aeroflex test solution accounts.
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Q: What are the typical challenges engineers face with regards to testing audio and/or video devices?
A: The cost per unit tested metric is a big concern for engineers testing multimedia capable devices in production. We know that there is a lot of pressure on the engineer to select the right hardware and software to meet throughput expectations.
Another challenge is often, a single engineer will be accountable for meeting the entire test requirements for a product. Consumers are expecting more and more from their multimedia devices increasing the test complexity. As this demand increases, engineers can expect to be responsible for testing a wide variety of technologies all in one product while still meeting production goals.
Q: How does the MMTS address these challenges?
A: The MMTS includes all the hardware, software, and fixtures required to test analog and digital audio and video in one system. The MMTS can test four devices simultaneously and the system is highly configurable making it ideal for the production environment. Companies free up internal resources through the MMTS enabling engineers to focus on tasks outside of production such as product development or improvement.
Q: Can you describe a MMTS success story and briefly describe the challenges the customer faced?
A: Sure, a few years back a very large consumer electronics company was having challenges testing the video outputs of a new market changing product. Off-the-shelf products offered by the standard test instrument companies were falling behind due to the rapid pace of change in this market. The technology to test the product was readily available with modular instruments, but putting everything together and having the final product validated and correlated to industry standards was too time prohibitive for the customer. The customer’s skill set and lack of a pre-developed platform added to the challenge of attempting to build an internal solution.
Using our MMTS platform with its ability to be configured to the customer’s exact needs with proven technology was instrumental to meeting the customer’s time requirements. What might have taken them at least a year, was accomplished in a matter of months. In addition to configuring the final system to take their exact measurements, we were also able to automate running existing test plans and output data directly to their shop floor data collection system.
Since the initial launch, the MMTS has been customized for over 10 other products for the company with minimal effort and full automation in test. This would have been hard to achieve with traditional box test equipment.
Q: Why do you think this customer chose VI Technology?
A: This customer chose VI Technology based on our proposed approach in solving their problem. Our knowledge in the multimedia domain and our experience in solving similar problems were also important factors in the decision making process.
Q: As audio and video technologies advance, how does VI Technology intend to keep up?
A: At VI Technology we are always looking to develop and work with the latest technology available to help our customers solve their testing needs.
Historically, our strength has been in maintaining a core competency in integrating automated test systems for certain markets, such as multimedia, and where appropriate leverage the technologies provided by a number of companies in the ecosystem surrounding PXI modular instruments.
We intend to continue with this strategy.
To learn more about the MMTS:
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