Machine setup and component placement in printed circuit board assembly

Abstract

Abstract. Populating printed circuit .boards is one of the most costly and time-consuming steps in electronics assembly. At the beginning of each work order, three decisions are required: (1) a sequence must be specified for placing the individual components on the board; (2) tape reels must be assigned to positions on the magazine rack; and (3) a retrieval plan must be determined should the same component type be assigned to more than one magazine slot. Collectively, these problems can be modeled as a nonlinear integer program. In this paper, we develop a series of algorithms for solving each using an iterative two step approach.Initially, a placement sequence is generated with a weighted, nearest neighbor lxaveling salesman problem (TSP) heuristic; the two remaining problems are then formulated as a quadratic integer program and solved with a Lagrangian relaxation scheme. As a final step, the current magazine assignments are used to update the placement sequence, and the entire process is repeated.Our ability to deal, at least in part, with simultaneous machine operations represents the major contribution of this work. The methodology was simulated for a set of boards obtained from Texas Instruments and theoretically compared with a heuristic currently in use.

The optimisation of the single surface mount device placement machine in printed circuit board assembly: a survey

“…Crama et al (2002) argued that the decision is heavily dependent on the modus operandi of the SMD placement machine. Bard et al (1994) found a strong relationship between the feeder setup and the component retrieval problem.…”

“…Many researchers have modelled the component pick-and-place sequencing problem as a TSP (Drezner and Nof 1984;Gavish and Seidmann 1988;Chan and Mercier 1989;Leipa¨la¨and Nevalainen 1989;McGinnis et al 1992;Chan 1993;Bard et al 1994;Lijun 1994, 1995;Francis, Hamacher, Lee and Yeralan 1994;Khoo and Ng 1998;Tirpak et al 2000;Jeevan et al 2002;Kumar and Luo 2003;Duman and Or 2004); whilst Ball and Magazine (1988) treated it as a rural postman problem. Several researchers (Altinkemer et al 2000;Grunow, Gu¨nther, Schleusener and Yilmaz 2004) viewed the problem as a vehicle-routing problem and Leipa¨la¨and Nevalainen (1989) treated it as a three-dimensional asymmetric TSP.…”

“…If the feeder carrier slots hold several component feeders of the same type (feeder duplication), a decision has to be made as to which feeder slot the component type should be retrieved from by assuming that a feeder setup and a component pick-and-place sequence have been determined (Bard et al 1994;Crama et al 1996). This is a component retrieval problem.…”

“…For example, the component pick-and-place sequencing problem is a quadratic integer program that is difficult to solve using exact methods for even unrealistically small problems (Liggett 1981). The complexity of the problem is due to the interrelated sub-problems where the quality of the component pickand-place sequence is dependent upon the feeder setup and component retrieval sequence, and vice versa (Bard, Clayton and Feo 1994). Indeed, the concurrent movement of many machine parts (such as turret rotation, feeder carrier and PCB table) requires a full examination of all feasible combinations of feeder setups and component retrieval sequences in order to determine the best feeder setup and component retrieval sequence for each feasible solution of the component pick-and-place sequence.…”

“…As an alternative, Moyer and Gupta (1996a) recommended simplifying the problem. For example, Ball and Magazine (1988), Gavish andSeidmann (1988), Leipa¨la¨and Nevalainen (1989), Chiu, Yih and Chang (1991), Ahmadi (1993), Van Laarhoven and Zijm (1993), Bard et al (1994), Crama et al (1996Crama et al ( , 1997, and others have split the problems into a series of sub-problems in order to reduce the size of the search space. Kendall (2002a, 2008), carried out a survey of machine classifications and addressed optimisation issues based on the characteristics and operational methods of the SMD placement machines.…”