COMPONENT ALLOCATION TO BALANCE WORKLOAD IN PRINTED-CIRCUIT CARD ASSEMBLY SYSTEMS

Component allocation in printed circuit card assembly systems is a spe cial case of the classical mixed-model assembly line balancing problem and involves assigning component types to machines to achieve specifi c production objectives. In this paper the component allocation proble m is considered for the scenario where there are two or more placement machines (possibly nonidentical) and the objective is to balance, for every card type, a combination of the card assembly time and the mach ine setup time. A mathematical formulation of the problem is developed for a class of placement machines. Two alternative solution approache s are presented: a list-processing-based heuristic for a simple versio n of the problem, and a linear-programming-based branch-and-bound proc edure for the general component allocation problem. Industrial case st udy results are presented for each approach that indicate expected thr oughput improvements of up to 8-10% over the company's current procedu re, with much less direct effort required by the process engineer.