Quality factor analysis of metalworking process with AHP

摘要

Many manufacturing processes have various factors that affect the quality of the products, and the analysis and optimisation of these factors are critical activities for engineers. Although much research has been done on statistical methods to investigate the effects of these factors on quality metrics, these statistical methods are not always applied in real-world situations because of problems involving data integrity, lack of control/measurement, or technical/administrative constraints. On the other hand, conventional heuristic methods for the selection of critical quality factors are mostly devoid of metrics that can be examined objectively. This study, therefore, implements the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for the quantitative prioritisation of the control factors involved in a flat end milling manufacturing process. In order to validate the metrics synthesised from the experience of skilled workers, the decision making is followed by a multivariate analysis of the variance based on the general linear model (GLM). The results show that AHP is able to provide fairly reliable metrics about the contribution of process parameters, and the group-wise judgment of qualified experts can improve the consistency of prioritisation.