GROUPING COMPONENTS IN PRINTED-CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY WITH LIMITED COMPONENT STAGING CAPACITY AND SINGLE CARD SETUP - PROBLEM CHARACTERISTICS AND SOLUTION PROCEDURES

The problem of grouping Printed Circuit Board (PCB) components to mini mize the total component and PCB loading cost subject to a capacity co nstraint on the number of types of components per group is formulated as an integer linear programming problem. The problem is shown to be N P-complete. Characteristics of the solution are outlined and a heurist ic algorithm is discussed. For the case in which it is optimal to load each PCB exactly once, the solution characteristics can be used to ob tain a lower bound on the objective function for any set of constraint s on pairs of PCBs that must be produced using the same group of compo nents. The bounds and the heuristic procedure are used to develop a br anch and bound algorithm. Computational results are given for four tes t problems derived from industrial contexts.