A MULTIPLE-CRITERIA APPROACH TO MACHINE SELECTION FOR FLEXIBLE MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

This paper describes a visual interactive decision support framework d esigned to aid decision makers in selecting the most appropriate machi nes for a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The framework can be us ed in the preinvestment stage of the planning process, after a decisio n has been made, in principle, to build an FMS. The framework mainly c onsists of two parts. The first part is called the prescreening stage, which narrows down all possible configurations by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The second part uses a goal programming (GP) model to find out the satisfactory candidate from the remaining shortl isted configuration. After applying the GP model, AHP is used again fo r sensitivity analysis. This approach helps managers explore and evalu ate costs and benefits of various scenarios for each configuration sep arately by experimenting with different types of machines and degrees of flexibility of the system.