Abstract
The study proposed a practical optimization method for production line configuration and continued to optimize the order release schedule for a Printed Circuit Board assembly line base on Surface Mount Technology. The research was composed of three stages. In the first stage, a strategy was proposed to determine optimal machine configuration base on predicated production needs, bottleneck machines, financial analysis, and Analysis of Variance. In the second stage, Linear Integer Programming was used to determine the order release schedule base on the selected line configuration in the first stage. In the third stage, simulation was used to compare the production efficiency with the results from proposed line configuration and order release strategy. The result shows that the production efficiency of the combined optimized line configuration and order release performed better than the existing line configuration and order release policy by 43.41％.