The process of printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) involves several machines, such as a stencil printer, placement machine and reflow oven, to solder and assemble electronic components onto printed circuit boards (PCBs). In the production flow, some failure prevention mechanisms are deployed to ensure the designated quality of PCBA, including solder paste inspection (SPI), automated optical inspection (AOI) and in-circuit testing (ICT). However, such methods to locate the failures are reactive in nature, which may create waste and require additional effort to be spent re-manufacturing and inspecting the PCBs. Worse still, the process performance of the assembly process cannot be guaranteed at a high level. Therefore, there is a need to improve the performance of the PCBA process. To address the aforementioned challenges in the PCBA process, an intelligent assembly process improvement system (IAPIS) is proposed, which integrates the k-means clustering method and multi-response Taguchi method to formulate a pro-active approach to investigate and manage the process performance. The critical process parameters are first identified by means of k-means clustering and the selected parameters are then used to formulate a set of experimental studies by using the multi-response Taguchi method to optimize the performance of the assembly process. To validate the proposed system, a case study of an electronics manufacturer in the solder paste printing process was conducted. The contributions of this study are two-fold: (i) pressure, blade angle and speed are identified as the critical factors in the solder paste printing process; and (ii) a significant improvement in the yield performance of PCBA can be achieved as a component in the smart manufacturing.

印刷电路板组装（PCBA）的过程涉及数台机器，例如模板印刷机，贴片机和回流焊炉，以将电子组件焊接并组装到印刷电路板（PCB）上。在生产流程中，部署了一些故障预防机制来确保PCBA的指定质量，包括焊膏检查（SPI），自动光学检查（AOI）和在线测试（ICT）。然而，这种定位故障的方法本质上是反应性的，可能会产生浪费，并且需要花费额外的精力来重新制造和检查PCB。更糟糕的是，组装过程的过程性能无法得到高水平的保证。因此，需要改善PCBA工艺的性能。为了解决PCBA流程中的上述挑战，提出了一种智能装配过程改进系统（IAPIS），该系统将k-means聚类方法和多响应田口方法相结合，形成了一种主动的方法来研究和管理过程性能。首先通过k均值聚类确定关键工艺参数，然后使用多响应Taguchi方法优化所选装配参数，以优化装配工艺的性能。为了验证所提出的系统，进行了一家电子制造商在锡膏印刷过程中的案例研究。这项研究的贡献有两个方面：（i）压力，刮刀角度和速度被确定为锡膏印刷过程中的关键因素；