A comparison of setup strategies for printed circuit board assembly

This paper develops and tests a set of strategies for operating a single printed-circuit-board assembly machine. In particular, the paper addresses decisions associated with feeder changeover, placement sequencing, and board sequencing. Solution procedures are developed and implemented for a variety of setup management strategies, including group and partial setup. These procedures are tested on a range of problems to determine their relative performance under different production environments. The procedure for group setup is shown to be applicable when component commonality is high and changeovers are time consuming. Partial setup strategies, which focus on minimizing the total production time, are shown to adapt to changing production conditions and therefore outperform the other setup strategies. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.