Integrated Architecture for Assembly Planning in an Electronics Manufacturing Environment

Presents an integrated approach to assembly planning for manufacturing printed circuit boards (PCBs). The integrated manufacturing assembly planning system (IMAPS) is a system that incorporates knowledge‐based techniques to assist process engineers with the development of assembly plans for building PCBs. IMAPS has been developed in a two‐year project with a multinational telecommunications manufacturer and the Alberta Research Council of Canada. The scope of IMAPS is to develop an integrated environment that takes full advantage of electronic information for assembly planning of PCBs. Several functions in the company can be integrated with IMAPS, including product design, detailed assembly planning, line balancing and generation of shop floor drawings. Information stored in the manufacturing and design databases of the corporation, about a PCB to be assembled, is employed by a knowledge‐based module to generate assembly plans to build the PCB. A line balancing procedure is employed to select the most ade...