Design of Time-Way for "H" Configuration of Eletroplating Machine

Design of time-way for electroplating machine is a complicated job especially in "H" configuration machine. Experienced engineer are the designers for these job. However, not only the result is not accurated, but also cause more setup time. This paper describes techniques to design time-way for cyclic hoist scheduling (CHS) of electroplating machine, which have an "H" configuration lay out. Tree search algorithm has been used to generate a machine sequence. An expert system based on engineer knowledge is used with tree search algorithm in order to generate a time-way. These techniques cannot guarantee the minimal cycle time for hoist scheduling problems. The results can be used very well in real industrial problems. These techniques give more accuracy; more efficiency and less setup time when compare to the design of time-way by engineers.