Mathematical Problems in Engineering 
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 364279, 21 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/364279
Research Article

Optimal Scheduling of Material Handling Devices in a PCB Production Line: Problem Formulation and a Polynomial Algorithm

Ada Che1 and Chengbin Chu2

 1School of Management, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an 710072, China
2ISTIT, Université de Technologie de Troyes, BP 2060, 12 Rue Marie Curie, 10010 Troyes Cedex, France
Received 30 January 2006; Revised 22 October 2007; Accepted 15 March 2008

Recommended by Jerzy Warminski

Abstract

Modern automated production lines usually use one or multiple computer-controlled robots or hoists for material handling between workstations. A typical application of such lines is an automated electroplating line for processing printed circuit boards (PCBs). In these systems, cyclic production policy is widely used due to large lot size and simplicity of implementation. This paper addresses cyclic scheduling of a multihoist electroplating line with constant processing times. The objective is to minimize the cycle time, or equivalently to maximize the production throughput, for a given number of hoists. We propose a mathematical model and a polynomial algorithm for this scheduling problem. Computational results on randomly generated instances are reported.