Optimal component assignment and board grouping in printed circuit board manufacturing

We consider operation assignment problems arising from a printed circuit board assembly process. The research was inspired by an application at Hewlett Packard where hundreds of types of printed circuit boards require the insertion of a number of components. The components can be inserted manually or by semiautomated insertion machines. The machines are limited in terms of the number of different component types that they can hold. We investigate how to assign the boards and components to the machines and manual process so as to minimize cost. An optimal solution technique is developed for the single-machine case and for the multiple-machine case where boards are not allowed to be set up on more than one process. In addition, a heuristic is developed which gives near-optimal solutions (within 0.3%) with much less computational effort. Although the problem this paper specifically addresses is that of partially automated PC board assembly, the results apply to a more general set of problems. Other applications include completely automated PC board assembly, flexible manufacturing systems, and general operation assignment problems.