Decision Making Approaches for Advanced Manufacturing Technology Evaluation and Selection

Abstract

Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AMT) constitutes one of the most important resources of manufacturing companies to achieve success in an extremely competitive world. Decision making processes for the Evaluation and Selection of AMT in these companies must lead to the best alternative available. Industry is looking for a combination of flexibility and high quality by doing significant investments in AMT. The proliferation of this technology has generated a whole field of knowledge related to the design, evaluation and management of AMT systems which includes a broad variety of methodologies and applications. This chapter presents a theoretical review of the term AMT, its diverse classification and a collection of the most effective multi-attribute models and methodologies available to support these processes. Relevant advantages are found in these models since they can manage complex decision making problems which involve large amount of information and attributes. These attributes frequently can be tangible and intangible when vagueness and uncertainty exist. There are several multi-attribute methodologies which are extensively known and used in literature; nevertheless, a new fuzzy multi-attribute axiomatic design approach is explained for an ergonomic compatibility evaluation of AMT.