Electrical or electronic products have been becoming smaller and high integrated recently, with printed circuit boards(PCB's) being the key components for these products. The introduction of new technology of surface mounted devices(SMD) opens new ways towards high integration on the PCB. Many plants in eletronical industry which produce high variety of PCB's to meet the demands of customer orders require flexibility in PCB's production lines. This survey paper describes the related optimization problems and solution methods to the automated surface mount technology(SMT) assembly lines, and provides with the research direction for improving flexibility.