REPLANNING AND ANALYSIS OF PARTIAL SETUP STRATEGIES IN PRINTED-CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

This paper considers the operation of component placement equipment fo r the assembly of printed circuit boards (PCBs) in a medium-volume, me dium-variety manufacturing environment. It focuses on the setup manage ment and operational planning issues associated with productive use of these expensive resources. The concept of replanning is introduced to adapt to changes in the production environment by explicitly consider ing the initial state of the system. The partial setup strategy is sug gested as a means of efficient adaptation and as a strategy that subsu mes other setup strategies encountered in practice and the literature. These concepts are applied to the optimization of a single-placement machine producing multiple products. The results of using partial setu ps are compared with other commonly used strategies. Experimental resu lts suggest significant gains at the single machine level. Future rese arch is being pursued to improve the solution procedures and extend th ese replanning concepts to the line level.