A heuristic for multiple-feeder PCB manufacturing

In the considered printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing problem, the objective is to minimize production time by allocating components to capacitated feeders and sequencing the placement of these components on a printed circuit board by a robot arm. A number of applications outside the computer industry illustrate the importance of the PCB problem also in other areas. We report the development and implementation of a new heuristic and a related lower bound. Computational results are given for test instances up to 13 feeders and 140 locations.