Development of a genetic algorithm for component placement sequence optimization in printed circuit board assembly

This paper describes the development and evaluation of a custom application exploring the use of genetic algorithms (GA) to solve a component placement sequencing problem for printed circuit board (PCB) assembly. In the assembly of PCB’s, the component placement process is often the bottleneck, and the equipment to complete component placement is often the largest capital investment. The number of components placed on a PCB can range from few to hundreds. As a result, developing an application to determine an optimal or near-optimal placement sequence can translate into reduced cycle times for the overall assembly process and reduced assembly costs. A custom application was developed to evaluate the effectiveness of using GA’s to solve the component placement sequencing problem. A designed experiment was used to determine the best representation and crossover type, crossover rate, and mutation rate to use in solving a component sequencing problem for a PCB consisting of 10 components being placed on a single-headed placement machine. Three different representations (path, ordinal, and adjacency) and six appropriate crossover types (partially mapped, ordered, cycle, classical, alternating edges, and heuristic) were evaluated at three different mutation rates and at 11 crossover rates. Two algorithm response variables, the total distance traveled by the placement head and the algorithm solution efficiency (measured as number of generations and algorithm solution time) were used to evaluate the different GA applications. The combination of representation and crossover type along with mutation rate were found to be the most significant parameters in the algorithm design. In particular, path representation with order crossover was found to produce the best solution as measured by the total distance traveled as well as the solution generation efficiency. Increasing the mutation rate led to slightly improved solutions in terms of head travel, but also resulted in increased solution time.