Set-up problem for a line of machines in printed circuit board assembly process planning: a multiple criteria decision making approach

The set-up problem in PCB assembly is often solved for the case of one machine. Hence, several research works focus on minimizing the number of component switches when components are loaded on the machines. These works exploit component commonality between board types. However, more criteria should be included when we consider the problem for the whole assembly line, including the requirements of load balancing, set-up time saving and maximization of machine utility. A new approach of combining Multi-Attribute Decision Making and Multi-Objective Decision Making has been proposed to solve this problem. A given numerical example aims to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach.