Selection of Flexible Manufacturing Systems using Data Envelopment Analysis

摘要

The present competitive environment in global market has forced the manufacturing organizations to reduce costs while improving the quality of products and responsiveness to the customers. Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) offer opportunities to those organizations to improve their technology, competitiveness and profitability through a highly proficient and focused approach to manufacturing effectiveness. The decision makers often face the problem of selecting the most appropriate FMS for a given manufacturing organization. This paper attempts to solve this FMS selection problem in two steps. The first step is used to identify and shortlist the most efficient alternative flexible manufacturing systems having better performance characteristics using the Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes (CCR) model of data envelopment analysis (DEA). Then, the weighted overall efficiency ranking method of multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) theory is employed to determine the best FMS from the shortlisted ones. The results match well with those obtained by the past researchers.