An improved group setup strategy for PCB assembly

Abstract

This paper considers a PCB group setup strategy in a single placement machine producing multiple products. The grouping objective is to minimize makespan that is composed of two attributes, the feeder change time and the placement time. Current group setup strategy considers only component similarity in grouping boards. In this paper, we propose an improved group setup strategy which considers both component similarity and geometric similarity using minimum metamorphic distance measures. The proposed group setup strategy is tested on a variety of production environments with existing group setup strategies and board's similarity coefficients. Test results show that the improved group setup strategy outperforms existing group setup strategies. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.