Simulation Software for Surface Mount Assembly

SMT Sim is a simulation program specially developed for surface mount assembly. Detailed models have been constructed for studying feeder setup and chip placement operations. This software tool can be used for estimating the production cycle time for a particular set of boards and for evaluating the impact of various production policies on a surface mount factory's throughput. Following some introductory comments regarding the need for developing a tool such as SMT Sim, this paper presents an overview of the functional elements of the software, i.e., the routines for managing input data, outputs, and process models. The object-based code libraries of the SMT Sim software are also discussed. Use of the software is explained by means of an example simulation run, from build plan to simulated production report. Two types of applications are addressed: benchmarking setup procedures and analyzing assembly cost.