Application of Analytic Network Process for the Design of Flexible Manufacturing Systems

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The design of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) has attracted the attention of organizations all over the world. One of the biggest challenges in the design of FMS is the identification of flexibilities and selecting a suitable configuration of FMS based on these flexibilities as a review of literature revealed various types of flexibilities and different configurations of FMS. The decision of selecting a suitable configuration for FMS involves identifying and prioritizing various flexibilities, which needs to be designed in the system. Furthermore, such decisions are highly strategic in nature as it involves heavy investment and risk. Hence, such decisions require a thorough analysis by considering various factors/criteria, which warrants the use of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) models. Thus in this paper, an attempt has been made to develop a MCDM model based on the Analytic Network Process (ANP) for the design of FMS. From an extensive analysis of the results, under the given circumstances, it is evident that implementation of a Flexible Production System (FPS) is a better alternative, when compared with available alternative configurations. According to the author’s knowledge, there is no paper available in the existing literature that discusses the application of ANP during the design of FMS and this paper has demonstrated a step-by-step approach of the ANP, which makes it more suitable for managers to learn and adopt such MCDM model to support their decisions.