In this paper we show how hybrid control and modeling techniques can be put to work for solving a problem of industrial relevance
in Surface Mount Technology (SMT) manufacturing. In particular, by closing the loop over the stencil printing process, we
obtain a robust system that can recover from faulty initial settings, adapt to environmental changes and unscheduled interrupts,
and remove discrepancies associated with bidirectional printing machines. Moreover, a timed Petri net argument is invoked
for bounding the control effort in such a way that the throughput of the system is unaffected by the introduction of the closed-loop
controller. The soundness of the approach is verified on a real SMT manufacturing line.
This work was supported in part by the Georgia Institute of Technology Manufacturing Research Center Grant No. B01D07.