Understand your product and its performance

SkyWATS allowed us to perform R&R comparisons of test stations in a fast and efficient manner and immediately highlighted an issue with a slight mismatch in performance which we were able to rectify (and verify the fix) with minimal downtime. I've used this product for over 10 years because I trust it and the team behind it.

Pros

Provides an almost "codeless" solution for those looking to quickly store test data from TestStand / LabVIEW. The data that is stored is then able to be reviewed and analyzed quickly allowing us to respond to product yield or performance issues in a proactive manner. Critical for any complex high volume test solution.

Cons

Inability to define (or add) custom queries or reports.

Data, data, data

Overall, using WATS is a great experience. We are able to look at specific data and understand how our production is affected, good or bad. We also use WATS to collect test reports on individual PCB's as well as completed products, this gives us great transparency over our production floor.

Pros

Since switching to WATS, the data collection and collation has helped our production teams to truly understand some of the issues we were having. This helped our teams to focus on changes that helped with our assembly and test areas.

Cons

Integrating with some of the other software platforms we already had in place was difficult at first and was a bit much having multiple resources giving us, effectively, the same information. However, once that was streamlined, it has become a vital tool.

Great tool for SPC !

We are using Skywats for SPC and analyse test yield, quantity tested per day/week and to improve our process, test benches and test softwares. This tool is very powerfull and give us quickly and easily, a lot of precious informations we took a lot of time to find before.

Pros

Easy to use and for looking information. Great for SPC analysis and be proactive for production support. Give us key parameters (yield, top 10 failures...) to improve our test bench and test software.

Cons

Need training and practice to understand and find informations we are looking for.

working as Manufacturing test engineer for over 12 years

be able to have the overview of the weekly/daily first pass yield, make it easier to target the highest failing test step in the manufacturing test.

Pros

very easy to bring the statistics for the period that the user is interested in. it gives graphic view for the measurements in the manufacturing , highlights the highest failing steps with failing rate.

Cons

it needed to preload the sequence model in TestStand back when I was using it. If it can be a hot plug app that can be merge in after the test development, it'll be great!

My Review

So far the skyWATS have reduced our problem solving processs' lead time signifcantly and the available data with complete test history immediately shows the proble as it is now and how it is comparable to previous tests

Pros

The level of automation to the test data management, easiness of cloud based service, no need to maintain tools

Cons

Sometimes it feels that you have almost too much alternative approaches to get needed results so it's bit easy to lost in the GUI.

Best statistical process control

Good software, great team and support !

Pros

You can see all of your production and even what you can not imagine! Very friendly and analysis are good, specialy top 10failures.

Cons

The dashboard is not very popular today and we can not set everything. But updates are preiodic and bring certanes new every time.

Monitor test stations

With WATS it is easy to check the test efficiency, optimize the test time, adjust the test limits and find production problems with repeated repair work. It is a great tool for test and quality engineers.

Pros

Easy tool to check all the test results of different test stations

Cons

Difficult to make a connection with another MES system

Using SkyWATS for Medical Device Production

Pros

SkyWATS makes it really easy to get test data in visual format and to actually make test data a business driving tool.

Cons

The Mobile App of the SkyWATS could be a bit more user friendly.

Uniform and real-time feedback from all our production sites in one tool.

By selecting WATS we will gain real time information from our production sites globally. We can easily investigate issues that occurs by analysis tools and reports provided in WATS

Pros

* Provides real-time feedback from our production sites. * Easy and fast entry level of data analysis. * Great export possibility’s to use data in mini-tab or such similar tools. * Built in yield reporting tools

Cons

* Missing functionality to be show part description instead of part numbers in reporting * Report limits in export mode. * Silverlight needed for some parts (minor)

Fast commissioning

Pros

skyWATS is easy to integrate to any test system. The commissioning is simple and fast. You will gain benefits of the skyWATS very fast.

Cons

The dashboard view could have more options, now it is a bit limited.