1. Purpose of the gate
Yield, calibration throughput and parametric spread have reached the levels in the plan, and sustaining teams own the product.
The ramp is complete when the product can be run as routine. The gate checks yield at each step against plan, calibration throughput and residuals, the stability of parametric spread, and statistical control of MEMS process, assembly and calibration parameters.
It also hands over ownership. Sustaining owners for process, test, calibration, quality, firmware and supply are named, and the monitors they will use, residual monitoring, reliability monitoring and field quality, are in place.
Limits set before the ramp from a few lots are reviewed here with volume data, so screening is neither too tight nor too loose.
The gate is also a check of the cost model. Unit cost at the end of the ramp is compared with the target set at the development commit, broken down into MEMS wafer, ASIC wafer, assembly, calibration and test, so that the first lifecycle review starts from facts rather than estimates.
Lessons from the ramp are captured while they are fresh: what limited output, which equipment took longest to correlate, which losses were hardest to trace, and what the next sensor should plan differently.
Closing the ramp changes how the product is managed. Weekly ramp meetings give way to the sustaining cadence of yield reviews, field quality reviews and periodic lifecycle reviews, and the development team moves on. The gate makes sure nothing that only the development team knew is lost in that move: open issues, the reasons behind limits and calibration choices, and the history of excursions are written down and handed to the owners who will need them.
Reviewers should also confirm that the reliability monitor plan agreed at qualification is now running on production parts, and that its first results are in line with qualification.
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