Development of a component-based machining centre selection model using AHP

Abstract

Machining centres are widely used in manufacturing companies all over the world. Since investments in machining centres are long-term and expensive, selection of the most appropriate machining centre is an important decision for manufacturing companies. There has been considerable effort spent in developing crisp and fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models that use technical specifications provided by machining-centre manufacturers such as, axis size, power, spindle speed, tolerance, repeatability, cutting-tool change time, and number of cutting tools along with other economical and commercial factors. However, the technical specifications are directly taken from machining-centre manufacturers’ catalogues without checking their correctness, adequacies, or ability to represent the areas that are used for measurement. In such a case, one cannot be sure whether the outcomes are sound or not without a detailed check of the technical specifications, which can only be performed after actual usage of the machine itself. To overcome all such problems, an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) model that evaluates the machining centre components is developed in this paper. The new component-based AHP model is then compared with two MCDM models that use only technical specification values.