ANALYSIS OF PARTIAL SETUP STRATEGIES FOR SOLVING THE OPERATIONAL PLANNING PROBLEM IN PARALLEL MACHINE ELECTRONIC ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

In this paper, we analyse the operational planning problem in an elect ronic assembly system with multiple placement machines operating in pa rallel. The partial setup strategy is proposed as an effective methodo logy for this problem. This strategy attempts to determine the balance between processing time and changeover time during system operation. The four primary issues are determining the assignment of products to machines, the sequence of products on each machine, the assignment of components to feeder locations for each product, and the component pla cement sequence for each product. Four solution procedures for unique and partial setup strategies are developed and tested. The computation results show that for low to medium volume high mix environments, the partial setup procedures offer significant improvement over the uniqu e setup strategies. The results also show that no single fixed strateg y dominates in all scenarios, and therefore, an adaptable procedure th at will choose the best solution for each set of requirements is neede d.