An effective algorithm for a surface mounting machine in printed circuit board assembly

This paper considers the problem of minimizing the time required to populate a printed circuit board using a surface mounting machine. The total assembly time depends on two optimization problems; reel assignment problem (RAP) and pick-and-place sequencing problem (PAPSP). We formulate RAP as a quadratic integer programming problem and PAPSP as an asymmetric travelling salesman problem. Since these problems are NP-hard, we focus on the development of heuristics that yield near optimal solutions in a reasonable time. The implementation of these methods have achieved an average saving of 31% over randomly generated sequences in total assembly time.