Cost-benefit and performance analysis of a stochastic model on printed circuit boards manufacturing process

The paper presents analyses of stochastic model proposed for a printed circuit boards (PCBs) manufacturing process. The process involves a hardware-software system based on surface mount technology that comprises of three stages: printing, pasting and soldering. Various faults that occur in the system as well as in manufactured PCBs are inspected by internal engineers. It is considered that for the system/manufactured PCBs the internal engineers repair ordinary software/components faults whereas other complex faults are get repaired by calling external engineers. Using Markov process and regenerative techniques, various measures of system performance are obtained and performance as well as cost-benefit analysis of the model is carried out. Through a graphical study, various conclusions are drawn for the system regarding its reliability, availability and profit. Further, it is shown that the proposed model is better than the existing model for the system given in Kumar and Batra (2012) wherein automatic PCB inspection by the system and no repair facility for PCBs is considered.