Decision support system for multicriteria machine selection for flexible manufacturing systems

This paper proposes an approach to the design and development of an intelligent Decision Support System (DSS) that is intended to help the selection process of alternative machines for Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). The process consists of a series of steps starting with an analysis of the information and culminating in a conclusion —a selection from several available alternatives and verification of the selected alternative to solve the problem. In real decision situations, more than one criterion is present, and the problem becomes multicriteria decision making. The approach presented combines the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique for multicriteria decision making with the rule-based technique for creating Expert Systems (ES). Such an approach allows the past experience, expressed as heuristics in ES, to be used. Moreover, this approach determines the architecture of the computer-based environment necessary for the decision support software system to be created. It includes the AHP software package (Expert Choice), Dbase III + DBMS, Expert System shell (EXSYS) and Turbo Pascal compiler (for the external procedural programs). As a result, a prototype decision support system for a fixed domain, namely a CNC turning center that is required to process a family of rotational parts, is developed. It helps the user to find the most “satisfactory” machine on the basis of several objective as well as subjective attributes.