Group technology for high-mix printed circuit assembly

The authors chronicle the successful application of the greedy board heuristic to the problem of assigning individual printed circuit board assemblies to product cells in a high-mix, capacity-constrained production environment. The specific case presented concerns the design of a high-speed surface mount line. The algorithm requires a list of boards, board volumes, and a bill of materials for each board. Temporal cells were designed to run at different times on the same set of equipment (two series Fuji CP-IIIs). The components in the first cell, comprising the highest-volume boards, were fixed on the entire first machine and half of the second. The remaining bank of the second machine was used to set up additional cells to run all remaining boards. Thus, high-volume boards could run at any time, while operators set up cells for low-volume work during high-volume board production. This approach improves machine utilization, accommodates changing mix, and permits simple operational alternatives