A comparative study of multi-criteria decision-making approaches for prioritising the manufacturing systems

Abstract

Globalisation and modern lifestyle trends have put up tremendous challenges to manufacturing industries. To meet the challenges imposed by today's dynamic market conditions it is the right time for the manufacturing companies to move from traditional manufacturing system to advanced manufacturing system. This paper highlights four areas of manufacturing systems, i.e., humanised flexible manufacturing system (HFMS), flexible manufacturing system (FMS), computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) and computer numerical control (CNC) systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework to proactively select the best manufacturing system. This study is an effort for identifying the factors affecting the manufacturing system and to find out the best manufacturing system. For this purpose a comparative study of multicriteria decision-making approaches, analytic network process (ANP) and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) techniques has been used for prioritisation of alternatives. The shortcomings of the research are stated and future directions are proposed.