A case study on AGV’s alternatives selection problem

Abstract

Current trend for Factory Automation is to design a variety of products to meet the changing demands of the customers. Automated material handling is an integral part of any automated manufacturing system. Automated Guided Vehicle (AGVs) is emerging as intelligent Material Handling Equipments (MHE) that is capable of adjusting to the changing scenario of manufacturing systems. AGVs are battery-powered, automated vehicles with capabilities to tag along programmed motions and orientation. AGVs selection has always been a challenging task owing to several constraints of manufacturing systems. Different MCDM (Multiple Criteria Decision Making) approaches have been employed by researchers for selection of MHE problem. This work is an attempt to choose amongst the AGVs alternatives and analyze their performance using certain MCDM approaches such as AHP, DEMATEL, TOPSIS, Fuzzy AHP, Fuzzy DEMATEL and Fuzzy TOPSIS. In the present work, data has been taken from Maniya and Bhatt [27] and the problem has been evaluated using four integrated approaches for analysis of AGV’s selection problem. It was found that Fuzzy AHP-Fuzzy TOPSIS and Fuzzy DEMATEL—Fuzzy TOPSIS technique gave better results for the instant case as they were devoid of vagueness error caused due to uncertainty in the decision making of experts. Authors have applied four approaches out of which DEMATEL-TOPSIS and Fuzzy DEMATEL-Fuzzy TOPSIS approaches has yet not been applied in AGVs selection problem, thus justifying original work and their appropriateness for the problem.