THE USE OF DATA ENVELOPMENT ANALYSIS FOR TECHNOLOGY SELECTION

The range of manufacturing technologies available to firms has signifi cantly increased in the past 20 years. A potential buyer of a technolo gy such as machine tools, industrial robots, or flexible manufacturing systems is faced with many options in both performance and cost. This paper proposes a decision model for technology selection problems usi ng a two-phase procedure. In phase 1, data envelopment analysis is use d to identify technologies that provide the best combinations of vendo r specifications on the performance parameters of the technology. In p hase 2, a multi-attribute decision making model is used to select a te chnology from those identified in phase 1. Unlike most other models fo r technology selection, this model takes into consideration the fact t hat the performance of a technology, as specified by its vendor, is of ten unobtainable in reality. The proposed model is illustrated using r obot selection and is tested on an actual robot data set.