A Multi Attribute Selection of Mobile Robot using AHP/M-GRA Technique

Abstract

Today's highly competitive environment and volatile market conditions at national and international level are forcing the manufacturing concerns and its management to adopt the advance automated material handling equipment like mobile robots in a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) to meet the customers' demand regarding quality and variety of product at minimal cost. Selection of a robot is one of the most difficult problems in today's manufacturing environment. The problem has become more challenging due to increasing specifications and complexity of the robot. The main aim of this paper is to develop and implement an integrated methodology based on AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and M-GRA (Modified Grey Relational Analysis) for the selection of a mobile robot for material handling in FMS environment. In this methodology, AHP technique has been used to assign the relative importance between mobile robot selection attributes and M-GRA technique is applied to determine mobile robot selection utility index. The proposed AHP/M – GRA technique is more suitable for the decision making in the presence of vagueness. The methodology is illustrated by means of an example. The ranking and evaluation of this process will provide a good guidance to the decision maker/user to select the appropriate material handling equipment on the basis of attributes. This is the novel effort in the area of robot selection.