The feeder rack assignment problem in PCB assembly: A case study

In this paper we describe a case study in the operational planning of the assembly of printed circuit boards. Given a line of placement machines and given a family of boards we develop a heuristic algorithm which focusses on the so-called feeder rack assignment problem. This problem addresses the question: where to attach the feeders alongside the feeder racks of the placement machines? Computational results on real-life instances indicate that the heuristic is superior to approaches currently used in practice.