Application of the R method in solving material handling equipment selection problems

Abstract

In manufacturing industries, material handling equipment plays a vital role and is considered as one of the important pillars to increase production efficiency. Hence, the selection of appropriate material handling equipment for a specific task is well acknowledged, but the complexity of this selection process drastically increases with the rise in the number of alternative equipment available in the market and a set of conflicting evaluation criteria. To resolve this problem, several multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques have been proposed by past researchers. In this paper, the application potentiality of a newly developed MCDM technique, i.e. R method is explored while solving five material handling equipment selection problems, i.e. conveyor, automated guided vehicle (AGV), stacker, wheel loader and excavator. The derived ranking results are contrasted with other popular MCDM techniques to validate its potentiality in shortlisting the candidate alternatives from the best to the worst, which would ultimately help in improving the overall efficiency of the manufacturing processes.