Chris Turner
Principal DFT Consultant - Redback Test Services
Currently a Principal DFT Consultant, Chris is widely recognized as an SME in PCBA Test Engineering, developing and deploying test solutions and methodologies. His proven approach and focus on effective collaboration has helped OEM designers and EMS in bringing new products to market from initial concept to high-volume production. He is a skilled guide for electrical designers in DFT, creation of robust test requirements, developing and designing PCBA test hardware to measurably lower overall costs while ensuring high quality Medical, Automotive, Military and Aerospace products.
You can find out more about Chris here: LinkedIn
Day One
Designing for Scale: Practical Strategies to Remove Manufacturing Bottlenecks
Scaling a PCBA from prototype to volume often exposes a hard truth: if test isn’t designed in early, production becomes slow, fragile, and dependent on skilled engineers.
This session focuses on practical design and manufacturing decisions that make products easier to test, scale, and support. Using real-world examples, it shows how common issues of poor test access, unclear strategies, and weak limits, create major downstream problems, and how small early changes can prevent them.
Topics include effective test point placement, choosing the right electrical test methods ICT, Flying Probe, Boundary Scan, functional (or no test!), and designing simple, robust, repeatable fixtures. It also covers how to create test procedures operators can run, avoiding one-off systems that don’t scale easily.
Attendees will leave with clear, actionable guidelines to reduce debug time, NPI, minimise training, and build test systems that scale without constant engineering support.
Day Two
Closing the Loop (Fast!): Practical SMT Process Control Using Real-Time Test Feedback
Most SMT lines don’t lack data, they lack fast, actionable feedback. When issues are identified too late, small process errors quickly become costly yield problems.
This session is a practical guide to tightening the feedback loop between test and the manufacturing process. It focuses on designing targeted test strategies and clear diagnostics systems that enable operators to detect and correct issues in real time.
Through real examples, it highlights how poor coverage, unclear limits, and complex diagnostics delay root cause analysis. In contrast, well-designed DFT and simple reporting can quickly expose issues like paste variation, placement errors, and component faults.
Key takeaways include how to “test what matters,” define meaningful pass/fail criteria, and present results so action happens on the line—not days later. The session also outlines how to integrate test into a closed-loop control system for faster response and more stable yields.
