Heuristics for Sequencing Printed Circuit Boards on a Surface Mount Device Placement Machine

SMD기계의 PCB 생산순서 결정을 위한 발견적 기법

This paper considers the problem of sequencing printed circuit boards(PCBs) on an automatic surface mount device(SMD) placement machine in order to minimize total setup time. Since the total set of component feeders needed by all boards cannot be loaded simultaneously on the magazine, the setup must be made between two successive boards in the sequence. It is assumed that the setup time depends on the number of component feeders to be replaced in the magazine. An important characteristic is that each feeder occupies a different number of slots in the magazine. This problem is equivalent to travelling salesman problem(TSP) except that the distances between two cities, that is, the setup times between two boards, are not known in advance. So, TSP-based heuristics with new distance functions are presented and their performances are compared through various test problems. Computational results indicate that our heuristics outperform existing methods.