Special Session: D-MATE: A Design Methodology for Connecting Automatic Test Equipment in Industry 4.0

With the growing presence of semiconductor devices in healthcare, automotive, and consumer electronics, Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) systems play an increasingly vital role in ensuring quality and reliability during validation. Despite their importance, ATE systems often operate in isolation from other manufacturing processes, limiting interoperability and integration potential. Consequently, fully incorporating ATE systems within the Industry 4.0 framework remains a largely unaddressed challenge. To bridge this gap, we propose adopting Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA), the industry de-facto standard communication protocol for machines, with an accompanying specification tailored to ATE systems. We developed and validated our information model on an advanced ATE system, demonstrating its practical application. The results showcase the successful integration of the ATE system into a fully-fledged Industrial Computer Engineering (ICE) laboratory demonstrator. This study validates the effectiveness of our model in a real-world scenario and highlights the significance of our integration approach within the context of Industry 4.0.