Where academic tradition
meets the exciting future

You are here: TUCS > PUBLICATIONS > Publication Search > Grouping of PCB Assembly Jobs ...

Grouping of PCB Assembly Jobs in the Case of Flexible Feeder Units

Mika Hirvikorpi, Timo Knuutila, Mika Johnsson, Olli Nevalainen, Grouping of PCB Assembly Jobs in the Case of Flexible Feeder Units. TUCS Technical Reports 505, Turku Centre for Computer Science, 2003.

Abstract:

Variable change costs between jobs in PCB assembly industry depend on the number of of component change occasions to be performed for the placement machine. Component changes are necessary due to the restricted feeder capacity of the machines. One can decrease the total amount of component change occasions by grouping jobs with similar component collections together in such a way that all components of a job group fit in the feeder simultaneously. The job grouping problem asks for a grouping with the minimal cardinality.

<p>In the present paper we study a generalization of the classical job grouping problem (for a single machine) where the feeder unit is organized to hold sub-units, called feeder bins. Each feeder bin has a number of attributes restricting its use. These include, for example, the width of the bin and a list of allowed component types which can be stored in the bin. There is a limited multiset of bins available in the machinery, and the feeder unit has a certain total width and a limit for the number of feeder bins. Finally, the component types should match some of the allowed types of the feeder bin. The task in this job grouping problem with bins (JGP-B) is to group the jobs in such a way that all components of a group fit in the bins taken from the bin storage and the bins fit in the feeder unit.

<p>The JGP-B problem turns out to be quite complicated to solve, and exact
solving is ruled out even for small problem instances. Several heuristics are proposed for the problem, and their operation is tested experimentally.

BibTeX entry:

@TECHREPORT{tHiKnJoNe03a,
  title = {Grouping of PCB Assembly Jobs in the Case of Flexible Feeder Units},
  author = {Hirvikorpi, Mika and Knuutila, Timo and Johnsson, Mika and Nevalainen, Olli},
  number = {505},
  series = {TUCS Technical Reports},
  publisher = {Turku Centre for Computer Science},
  year = {2003},
  keywords = {Electronics assembly, Single machine job grouping, Heuristics, Combinatorial optimization},
  ISBN = {952-12-1111-3},
}

Belongs to TUCS Research Unit(s): Algorithmics and Computational Intelligence Group (ACI)

Edit publication