Osterman, M.D.Pecht, M.The placement of components on a printed wiring board (PWB) affects reliability, manufacturability, maintainability, and cost. In the past, placement techniques have been developed solely on the basis of minimizing the total wirelength necessary for the complete interconnection of the components. This paper presents techniques to improve placement based on reliability as well as routability. The approach discusses an innovative coupled force-directed methodology.en-USTechnical Report