A dynamic programming approach to a reel assignment problem of a surface mounting machine in printed circuit board assembly

We consider the problem of assigning reels of components to slots on feeder racks of a surface mounting machine which is used to populate printed circuit boards with surface mount technology. This reel assignment problem (RAP) is one of a series of optimization problems that should be addressed to improve the production rate. We preprocess RAP to facilitate the application of dynamic programming and then formulate it as an integer programming problem. We solve the problem by using a heuristic algorithm based on dynamic programming. We implement the algorithm as a computer program and perform computer simulations. The simulation results are compared to those of the Effective Algorithm previously proposed