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    PCB assembly scheduling through kit concept

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    This paper presents the design and test of a new scheduling environment dedicated to the off-line scheduling of PCB assembly shops. The main idea introduced is the employment of the `kit concept’ as a scheduling tool, as opposed to the traditional batch scheduling. In the kit approach, the basic PCB aggregations are kits composed of different PCBs matching finished products requirements, instead of homogeneous batches of identical boards. By introducing the kit approach, PCB assembly schedule is intended to be focused more towards the assembly of final products than towards the internal PCB assembly shop constraints and requirements. A simulation model and data from a real assembly system are used to compare the kit approach with traditional batch processing. Experimental results show that the proposed kit approach jointly achieves remarkable improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency performances of the assembly system, as compared to the batch approach. However, it is determined also that these advantages can only be achieved if a sufficiently advanced scheduling system is used

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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