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An examination of routeing flexibility for small batch assembly of printed circuit boards

1990; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 11 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00207549008942857

1366-588X

Don R. Taylor, Robert J. Graves,

Flexible and Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems

SUMMARY In this paper, we examine and quantify the effects of introducing new processing flexibility in the rapidly changing environment of printed circuit board (PCB) assembly. Specifically, we perform experiments designed to establish the benefits and determine the limitations associated with the introduction of routeing flexibility. We examine system behaviour as batch sizes are reduced in an environment characterized by moderate set-up requirements. We further demonstrate that the performance of flexible routeing policies in this environment is adversely affected by larger batch sizes and that the introduction of routeing flexibility leads to improved system performance in small batch assembly.