COMPONENT KITTING IN SEMIAUTOMATED PRINTED-CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY

The component kitting problem in semi-automated printed circuit board (PCB) assembly concerns the allocation of components among various ide ntical assembly stations while taking production time and component ma gazine capacity constraints into account. Before a component kit can b e generated, jobs must be arranged in groups for processing at the sam e assembly station. Changeover from one kit to another requires consid erable setup time. Therefore, the main objective is to minimize total operator time. This problem, although prevalent in industry, has not b een researched extensively. In this paper, we describe the component k itting problem faced by an electronics manufacturer. A heuristic solut ion procedure is developed, which is computationally very efficient ev en for large-scale problems encountered in industry. Computational exp erience demonstrates that the heuristic tends to produce solutions whi ch are close to the optimum.