Home Automation IoT Company Cuts ASIC Testing Costs

#News(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Challenges
At the heart of digitalSTROM’s home automation solutions is a controller chip that is added to each electricity switch. The high-voltage chip manages the communication over powerline and connects directly to electricity. Manufacturing the custom chip and delivering an end-to-end quality solution to the market presented digitalSTROM with several challenges:

Manufacturing costs. Delivering a consumer-market solution required minimizing manufacturing costs – including the costs of testing the high-voltage chip. According to Nuno Pinto, Head of Production, cost reduction is a top priority for digitalSTROM, particularly at the early stages of a new mass market product rollout.
Time to market. digitalSTROM could not afford any manufacturing delays due to its commitment to distributors and resellers and the need for timely availability of products. A key objective was risk reduction and ensuring that delivery times would be met, even if problems were detected during the manufacturing process.
Quality. The reliability and high-quality of the chip could not be compromised, due to its critical role in managing the home automation network.
Unpredictable volumes. As a small company operating at the forefront of a new market, digitalSTROM could not forecast production quantities with high certainty. It needed a flexible manufacturing solution that would enable handling peak demand in short notice, without the need to invest in high stock volumes.

Solution
DELTA’s expert ASIC manufacturing services enabled digitalSTROM to address all challenges, while keeping manufacturing costs down and guaranteeing on-time delivery.

Design for testability. Starting from early chip design stages, DELTA’s test engineers collaborate closely with digitalSTROM’s ASIC design team to ensure that the chip design would support efficient and cost-effective testing.

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