EXPERT-SYSTEM BASED PLACEMENT SEQUENCE IDENTIFICATION FOR SURFACE-MOUNT PCB ASSEMBLY

Component placement is a critical and time consuming task in the assem bly of surface mount printed circuit boards (PCBs). The past decade ha s witnessed the need for high speed, accurate, and repeatable placemen t procedures in the PCB assembly domain. At the same time, manufacturi ng engineers are faced with demands to reduce flow-time and increase t hroughput rates in order to increase productivity. A consequence of th ese trends has been the need to identify acceptable (possibly optimal) placement sequences during surface mount PCB assembly. The focus of t his research was the identification of ''near optimal'' solutions for the placement sequence identification problem while considering machin e and process constraints in a manufacturing environment. Expert (or k nowledge-based) systems were used as the solution method for this prob lem. PROLOG, a popular language for artificial intelligence applicatio ns, was used in this research. The prototype knowledge-based system de veloped in this research identifies solutions in(almost) real-time.