Simulated annealing algorithm using iterative component scheduling approach for chip shooter machines

A Chip Shooter placement machine in printed circuit board assembly has three movable mechanisms: an XY table carrying a printed circuit board, a feeder carrier with several feeders holding components and a rotary turret with multiple assembly heads to pick up and place components. In order to minimize the total traveling time spent by the head for assembling all components and to reach the peak performance of the machine, all the components on the board should be placed in a perfect sequence, and the assembly head should retrieve or pick up a component from a feeder that is properly arranged. There are two modeling approaches of solving the components scheduling problem: integrated and iterative approaches, most popular meta-heuristic used so far for components scheduling problem is population based using integrated modeling approach. This work presents a single based meta-heuristic known as Simulated Annealing with an iterative modeling approach was adopted. The computational study is carried out to compare other population-based algorithms that adopted integrated approach. The results demonstrate that the performance of the simulated annealing algorithm using iterative approach is comparable with other population-based algorithms using integrated approach.