Microelectronics design for pollution prevention: a decision tradeoff tool

After exhausting all "pollution prevention pays" opportunities, further efforts towards environmental protection often engender some type of cost to the manufacturer. Then, designers must weigh tradeoffs between environmental impacts and equally pressing needs to reduce rests, improve product quality and reduce cycle time. This paper presents a computer aid for making these tradeoffs. Qualitative House of Quality (HOQ) information is used as a starting point to derive a mathematical programming formulation for multiobjective optimization. An integer linear program is formulated in a user-friendly spreadsheet. A general formulation of the problem for printed circuit board assembly is provided. The conflicting objectives include cost, size, weight, quality, cycle time, disassembly time and solvent VOC's. The decision variables relate to number of layers, board width, board type and types of components.