Optimization and Measuring Techniques for Collect-and-Place Machines in Printed Circuit Board Industry

摘要

This thesis considers optimization problems arising in printed circuit board assembly.Especially, the case in which the electronic components of a single circuitboard are placed using a single placement machine is studied. Although there is alarge number of different placement machines, the use of collect-and-place -typegantry machines is discussed because of their flexibility and increasing popularityin the industry.Instead of solving the entire control optimization problem of a collect-andplacemachine with a single application, the problem is divided into multiple subproblemsbecause of its hard combinatorial nature. This dividing technique iscalled hierarchical decomposition. All the subproblems of the one PCB - onemachine -context are described, classified and reviewed. The derived subproblemsare then either solved with exact methods or new heuristic algorithms are developedand applied. The exact methods include, for example, a greedy algorithm anda solution based on dynamic programming. Some of the proposed heuristics containconstructive parts while others utilize local search or are based on frequencycalculations.For the heuristics, it is made sure with comprehensive experimental tests thatthey are applicable and feasible. A number of quality functions will be proposedfor evaluation and applied to the subproblems. In the experimental tests, artificiallygenerated data from Markov-models and data from real-world PCB production areused. The thesis consists of an introduction and of five publications where thedeveloped and used solution methods are described in their full detail. For all theproblems stated in this thesis, the methods proposed are efficient enough to be usedin the PCB assembly production in practice and are readily applicable in the PCBmanufacturing industry.