At a recent Test Insights event hosted by Circuit Check, I shared my perspective on one of the biggest opportunities in electronics manufacturing today: unlocking the value of test data. In an age of AI, cloud platforms, and global production lines, manufacturing success increasingly depends not just on making quality products—but on making use of the data those products generate.

Test data, in particular, is one of the most underutilized assets in electronics manufacturing. Drawing from over two decades of experience—and through our product, WATS—I’ve seen how companies can gain a competitive edge by managing, standardizing, and securing manufacturing test data. When treated as a strategic asset, test data can transform the way organizations build, test, and scale their products.

The State of Test Data: Unstructured, Inconsistent, and Underused

Test data is generated continuously throughout manufacturing—from ICT and AOI to final functional testing. Yet despite its volume and potential, much of this data is trapped in isolated formats, spread across different facilities and platforms, and often only accessed when something goes wrong.

The biggest challenge is the limited standardization. Every engineer seems to have their own way of formatting and storing test reports.

Whether it’s Excel, JSON, XML, HTML, flat text files or even databases, the variety of formats—and lack of standard schema—makes aggregating and analyzing test data at scale incredibly difficult.

I’ve seen this challenge firsthand. For example, while visiting test and production equipment vendors at the Productronica trade show in Germany, virtually every vendor answered the same way when I asked about data storage: “It’s up to the customer.”

This lack of enforced standards means even the most advanced testing equipment still outputs data in inconsistent, often incompatible formats—leaving manufacturers with a mountain of unreadable or siloed data.

Why Standardization Matters

That’s why we built WATS to provide a unified infrastructure for collecting, storing, and analyzing test data. By integrating with tools like NI TestStand, LabVIEW, OpenTAP, and custom test sequences, WATS ingests and normalizes data using consistent formats such as our own XML and JSON schemas.

TestStand, for example, supports multiple report formats, but even within that ecosystem, ATML reports are ironically some of the hardest to integrate because their standard is so open.

The result is hundreds of custom report structures—sometimes from a single test platform—making comparative analytics, traceability, and automated insights incredibly challenging. That’s where WATS steps in, converting diverse test outputs into a centralized, analytics-ready format.

Global Scale, Local Complexity

The problem magnifies with global manufacturing. OEMs with multiple sites or contract manufacturers in different regions often struggle to maintain visibility across production lines.

WATS currently collects around 3 terabytes of data monthly from tens of thousands test stations across the globe. With over 10,000 users and 20 years in the test domain, I’ve seen how difficult it is to make test data accessible and actionable across facilities—especially when each site configures its reports differently.

When you zoom out and look at multiple factories, you quickly realize that every factory, and even every engineer, may store and structure their test data differently. Without unifying that, it’s nearly impossible to scale insights.

AI Hype vs. Data Reality

While artificial intelligence promises a revolution in manufacturing insights, its effectiveness is entirely dependent on the quality and structure of input data. AI agents are not failing—data strategies are.

For AI to provide real-time analytics, quality alerts, or predictive maintenance, it needs structured, reliable, and complete data. Most manufacturers aren’t there yet.

At Virinco, we’re working to change that, starting with suggestions generated by AI that help users identify anomalies—like underperforming fixtures or process inconsistencies—rather than simply flooding inboxes with alerts.

Data Security in the Cloud Era

I also see the growing importance of data security in manufacturing environments—especially when transitioning to cloud-based systems.

Many manufacturers still keep test data on local test stations—often with weak or non-existent security protocols. I’ve even seen test stations with login credentials taped to the monitor and all the test data stored as plain text files.

That’s why we built WATS as a secure cloud platform hosted on Microsoft Azure, with strict compliance standards including ISO 27001 certification, TLS encryption, multi-factor authentication, and automatic updates. We migrated all of our infrastructure from virtual machines to Azure’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) to offload patching, security updates, and redundancy to Microsoft's dedicated teams.

For customers who require it, on-premise versions of WATS are available, though they come with higher maintenance costs and slower update cycles.

Practical Use Cases: From CMs in China to Audio Testing in Norway

WATS was originally built to solve a specific problem: an OEM with contract manufacturing in China suffered a major recall because they had no real-time insight into test failures happening offshore.

Since then, the platform has evolved to support customers across industries—medical, automotive, consumer electronics—allowing them to collect, trace, and act on test data in near real-time.

The Road Ahead: Traceability, AI, and Integration

Looking forward, we plan to expand the AI capabilities of WATS, particularly in recommendation engines that surface patterns and suggest areas for process improvement.

We also continue to enhance integrations with MES, ERP, and PLM systems to enable seamless bi-directional data flow—helping OEMs connect shop floor test results with engineering, supply chain, and quality management systems.

The value is already there in your test data—you just have to make it accessible, structured, and secure.

Key Takeaways

• Test data is critical, but rarely standardized. Every factory and test engineer stores it differently, making analytics difficult.
• Standardization enables AI. Without structured data, even the most advanced analytics tools fail.
• Cloud security is achievable and cost-effective. Platforms like Microsoft Azure offer scalable, secure environments if implemented properly.
• WATS unifies global test data. It turns disconnected data streams into actionable insights, enabling faster diagnostics, better traceability, and reduced quality costs.

About Tom Lomsdalen

Tom Andres Lomsdalen is an experienced technologist, test engineer and leader with over 20 years of expertise in the test and data acquisition industry. He plays a key role at Virinco where he has been instrumental in the development and global adoption of the company’s flagship product, WATS.  WATS is a test data management and analytics solution, enabling OEMs and electronics manufacturers worldwide to improve product quality, reduce failure rates, and streamline their production and test processes. With his deep technical knowledge and industry insight, Tom has been a driving force in establishing WATS as a leading tool in its market.  Since 2017, Tom has held the position as CEO at Virinco.