Hyper-Heuristic Optimization Using Multifeature Fusion Estimator for PCB Assembly Lines With Linear-Aligned-Heads Surface Mounters

Printed circuit board assembly line scheduling (PCBALS) is a difficult task in the electronic industry for assembly lines using surface mounters, which is critical for production efficiency. This is a special type of line optimization problem that uses different allocation techniques, resulting in wide differences in assembly times between machines. This article proposes a hyper-heuristic optimizer embedded with a multifeature fusion ensemble estimator (HHO-MFEE) for PCBALS using linear-aligned-heads surface mounters. The objective and constraints of the problem are discussed, and a min-max integer model for small-scale problems is built. At the hyper-heuristic low level, seven data- and target-driven heuristics are presented for allocating components to different machines. Strategies for duplicated conditions with component types and placement points allocation are proposed to improve the applicability of the algorithm and the quality of the solution. An ensemble assembly time estimator that incorporates the coding of multifeatures, including estimated subobjectives, is proposed for evaluating the quality of the solution. Experimental results show that: 1) the gaps between the solution from HHO-MFEE and the optimal solution of the model are 3.44%~7.28% for small-scale data; 2) the proposed time estimator has higher accuracy than regression and heuristic-based ones, with mean absolute error of 2.01% and 3.43% for training and testing data, respectively; and 3) HHO-MFEE is better than other state-of-the-art algorithms, with average improvement of 7.21%~9.47%.