| Surface mount Printed Wiring Board (PWB) assembly has drastically gained acceptance and market share in today's electronics industry. The widespread use of automation in the PWB assembly domain has been dictated by the increasing density of components on PWBs coupled with the continual decrease in component lead pitch, greater product mix, smaller volumes, quality considerations, and the increased cost of labor. Manufacturing problems in the surface mount PWB domain typically involve a variety of issues that are often inter-related. These manufacturing and process considerations are complex and varied in nature. Consequently, there is a need for decision support for manufacturing related problem solving.;This research presents a prototype decision support framework to assist in creating and generating a manufacturing plan for surface mount PWB assembly. The framework assists in decision making from design through manufacturing planning. It combines the use of expert systems, artificial neural networks and fuzzy theory techniques to identify near optimal solution(s) for facets of the surface mount PWB manufacturing planning problem. The prototype hybrid architecture whose modules function in a mutually supportive manner is a ideal and appropriate mechanism to solve ill-defined and diverse problems within the surface mount PWB realm.;The functions of process planning, scheduling, sequencing, line balancing, and shop floor control are not purely serial or hierarchical in the surface mount PWB assembly manufacturing. A number of decisions result from the interaction between them. The dynamic nature of the surface mount PWB assembly environment is a critical and important factor that needs to be considered when developing an automated manufacturing planning system. As the processes become more automated and complex in their operation partly due to the increasing density of surface mount PWBs, it is essential that manufacturing planning for PWB assembly be automated because there simply is too much information for the problems to be solved manually. |
