| Article ID: | iaor20072247 |
| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Volume: | 57 |
| Issue: | 9 |
| Start Page Number: | 1134 |
| End Page Number: | 1141 |
| Publication Date: | Sep 2006 |
| Journal: | Journal of the Operational Research Society |
| Authors: | Volgenant A., Waal A. de |
| Keywords: | heuristics, manufacturing industries |
In the considered printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing problem, the objective is to minimize production time by allocating components to capacitated feeders and sequencing the placement of these components on a printed circuit board by a robot arm. A number of applications outside the computer industry illustrate the importance of the PCB problem also in other areas. We report the development and implementation of a new heuristic and a related lower bound. Computational results are given for test instances up to 13 feeders and 140 locations.