Evaluation Strategy of Hydraulic Crane Through Mathematical Programming: An Automated Approach to Meet Customer Requirement

Abstract

Purchasing accurate capital equipment to meet the demand of a user in all respect is definitely a strategic decision that involves high initial investment, detailed functional analysis of available alternatives and obtaining the right decision in terms of its productivity, reliability, maintainability and cost. The present study emphasizes upon proper identification and ranking of customer requirements and subsequent technical requirements for four alternative hydraulic cranes taken into consideration. To determine the interrelationship among the customer requirement and technical requirement, the study first employs analytic hierarchy process approach for ranking of customer requirement and checking the consistency of ranking. Next, an analytic hierarchy process–quality function deployment procedure is employed to rank the alternatives based on technical requirement and customer requirement. Further, the cost implications of the equipment are taken into consideration and through a Sensitivity Analysis approach including subjective factor measurement and objective factor measurement, the equipment is ranked. The degree of sensitivity was further verified with a range of values of subjective factor measure for each category of crane. Finally, a zero–one goal programming method is applied to strengthen further the ranking of the equipment applying LINDO platform, where along with the identified technical requirements, agility and reliability are also taken into account. The agility is represented in terms of associated cost implications to meet the technical requirement, whereas the reliability of components is determined by the condition of failure.