The component retrieval problem in printed circuit board assembly

摘要

Minimization of the makespan of a printed circuit board assembly process is a complex problem. Decisions involved in this problem concern the specification of the order in which components are to be placed on the board and the assignment of component types to the feeder slots of the placement machine. If some component types are assigned to multiple feeder slots, an additional problem emerges: for each placement on the board, one must select the feeder slot from which the required component is to be retrieved. In this paper, we consider this component retrieval problem for placement machines of the Fuji CP type. We explain why simple forward dynamic programming schemes cannot provide a solution to this problem, invalidating the correctness of an algorithm proposed by Bard, Clayton, and Feo (1994). We then present a polynomial algorithm that solves the problem to optimality.