A Systematic Analysis of an Industrial Pickup and Placement Production System

Surface-mount technology is a method for producing electronic circuits in which the components are mounted or placed directly onto the surface of printed circuit boards. The purpose of this study was to analyze nozzle change in two production lines. Following a previous study, it was proposed that one type of nozzle would place resistors while another type of nozzle would place capacitors, contrary to what happened in the initial process, where the two placed both components. However, the change of nozzle was not done globally, but only applied to two specific types of capacitors that were more critical. Even so, the positive effect of this change was globally visible, both in the decreased number of component rejection and in the reduced number of component defects in the printed circuit boards. It was also possible to estimate the percentage saving and the expected growth from this new implementation. The data were validated using statistical analysis. Finally, the current cleaning periodicity of the nozzles was examined in order to verify if it was compromising their performance.