Solution to a bay design and production sequencing problem

Abstract

This thesis addresses the problem of setting up a surface mount placement machine for production. The objective is to minimize the number of machine changeovers made during a production run consisting of a number of circuit cards. The solution to the problem involves two separate decisions. The first decision considers determining how to combine feeders together in "bays" or groups of feeders, and how to assign the bays to the circuit cards. The second decision considers the circuit card production sequence. A mathematical programming formulation is given, however, its solution is very difficult for problems of a realistic size. Several heuristic approaches are suggested and used to solve actual and test problems. The heuristic for bay design uses clustering techniques used in Group Technology while the sequencing problem is solved using heuristics based on solution techniques for the Traveling Salesman problem.