The selection of flexible manufacturing system using preference selection index method

Abstract

The selection of appropriate flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) is one of the most critical decisions in the automated manufacturing industries. In this paper, a systematic and effective multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methodology is presented and implemented for the selection of appropriate FMS alternative. The proposed methodology is based on the preference selection index (PSI) method. In addition, the proposed method easily handles qualitative criteria involved in the decision-making process, and an appropriate flexible FMS alternative is selected without considering the relative importance between FMS selection criteria. Three different types of FMS selection problems are considered and examined to demonstrate, validate and check the reliability of the proposed method. The study has concluded that the FMS selection methodology based on PSI method is simple, logical and more appropriate for the FMS selection problems.