Optimal robotic component placement

An increasingly common feature of manufacturing companies is the use of robotic component placement machines in the assembly of electrical goods. These machines place electronic components at predefined positions on printed circuit boards. A robotic arm, which carries one component at a time, collects components from feeders and places them, under computer control, onto the printed circuit board. Using examples provided by a major New Zealand manufacturer, the authors investigated the problem of assigning component reels to feeder positions and then constructing efficient placement sequences for such a robotic placememt machine. An integer programming formulation is developed for this problem that, unlike previous solution techniques in the literature, can produce solutions which provably minimize total placement time for all company supplied sample problems. This solution method generates solutions approximately 10% better than those generated manually by the manufacturer’s engineers.