Moving beyond the limits of “one size fits all”

1. Introduction
2. Key Definitions
3. Solving the Toughest Problems, Achieving the Desired Outcomes
4. Enhancing the Transitions Across the Lifecycle
5. What Sets Keysight Apart
6. Conclusion
7. Related Information

For those seeking to create truly effective test and measurement solutions, “one size fits all” is a limiting value proposition. The reason: along the product lifecycle, test requirements evolve from unbounded in R&D to just enough in manufacturing.

Among test and measurement companies, Keysight is unique in providing a portfolio of test solutions that spans benchtop and modular hardware and compatible software. Our key attribute: we enable the customer to create best-in-class measurement solutions that can be benchtop-only, modular-only or a hybrid of the two.

The bedrock is our commitment to measurement integrity: it lets technical staff and decision makers focus on what’s needed and optimize how to get there. By ensuring consistent results across our customers’ crucial objectives, Keysight puts them in the strongest position to drive change and deliver the business and technological breakthroughs they seek.

Two key ideas embody the unique value of our approach: measurement science and measurement integrity. These have a cause-and-effect relationship with measurement science serving as the foundation that enables measurement integrity. We define these terms as follows:

Measurement science: Our experts create measurement-related intellectual property, algorithms and methodologies that are embedded within hardware and software elements that are backed by specified performance and, in many cases, deliver metrology-grade results.

• Benefits: Measurement science ensures confidence in results at baseband, RF and microwave, and therefore confidence in decisions that are based on measurements results or subsequent analyses.

Measurement integrity: The use of common measurement science across hardware and software products ensures consistent, reliable results that correlate across the customer’s product lifecycle.

• Benefits: This enables greater efficiency across the lifecycle and faster resolution when results don’t match (i.e., an error is more likely to be caused by a product, process or operator than the instrument or software).

Through our commitment to measurement integrity, we let our customers focus on organizational needs, optimize how to get there, and ultimately achieve better results.

In conversations with us, decision makers in wireless communications, aerospace/defense programs, and elsewhere, have described their toughest problems, desired solutions and desired outcomes. Here is a consolidated sketch:

Toughest problems: Financial metrics such as revenue goals and profitability are paramount. From an operational perspective, solutions must satisfy requirements for dependability, readiness and uptime. While the nature of competition and consequences of failure are quite different in wireless and aerospace/defense, all want to gain and maintain a sustainable edge against their competitors.

Desired solution: The most suitable solution will help fulfill the decision maker’s vision of the operational breakthroughs their organization needs now and in the future. They also have a desire to increase their ongoing success relative to financial goals and metrics.

Desired outcomes: They seek an approach that will help them meet their goals—dependably. It must also enable them to affect positive change for present and future benefit. Said another way, it must provide a solid foundation for evolutionary change across the product lifecycle and over time.

Within the product lifecycle, the key transitions from stage to stage benefit from a choice of best-fit hardware and software platforms.

In the early R&D stage, Keysight helps shorten design cycle times by providing tighter connections between test and simulation, independent of hardware platform. For example, development teams can choose signal-generation and signal-analysis tools that work with electronic design automation (EDA) software and measurement hardware. This simplifies the process of creating signals, predicting signal quality and device performance, and creating test signals for device characterization.

In R&D, we provide best-in-class RF and microwave performance that lets designers establish benchmarks for accuracy and precision. When transitioning to design validation (DV), they can leverage our common (and proven) measurement science to define meaningful margins in DV test systems.

In the transition to manufacturing, system creators can accelerate test-plan development by leveraging test code developed in DV. Our common hardware architectures and measurement methodologies help them optimize the tradeoffs between size, performance, throughput, and more, on the production line.

The ability to meet the customer’s present and future needs with benchtop, modular or hybrid solutions sets Keysight apart from competitors that offer only benchtop or modular hardware. Measurement integrity and measurement science are the common threads that run through our hardware and software offerings, and these provide additional—and meaningful—points of differentiation versus other vendors.

To illustrate the concept, the following table maps a range of Keysight products—benchtop, modular, handheld and software—across a typical product lifecycle. Green cells indicate “best fit” and orange cells indicate “possible fit” (depending the specifics of the application).

Teams gain confidence across the lifecycle because Keysight’s ongoing investment in measurement science ensures fully specified performance in each stage. This enhances their ability to optimize testing in ways that support their technical and business objectives.

Ultimately, the whole organization benefits: it becomes more efficient when successive groups see consistent measurement results across early R&D, R&D, DV and manufacturing. The foundation is our commitment to measurement integrity. The net result is a more consistent ability to deliver the breakthroughs the organization needs to drive positive change and achieve crucial objectives. .

Keysight is a global electronic measurement technology and market leader helping to transform its customers’ measurement experience through innovation in wireless, modular, and software solutions. Keysight provides electronic measurement instruments and systems and related software, software design tools and services used in the design, development, manufacture, installation, deployment and operation of electronic equipment. Information about Keysight is available at www.keysight.com.