Selection of Rapid Prototyping Technology

Abstract: The competition in world market has intensified tremendously. Time to market a product is reduced considerably. Therefore, substantial reduction in time, methodology and material resources for development & production is required. Rapid Prototyping is a promising Time Compression technique. There are a large number of R.P. Technologies available in the market. Appropriate technology selection is a difficult, multitasking and complex process for technology seekers. The selection of RP system is difficult due to lack of bench mark standards and industry experiences with most of these systems. Earlier attempts were made to compare different RP system on basis of benchmarking studies conducted by either user companies or independent researchers. There is a general shortage of benchmark standards and industry experience with machines. Some past benchmarking studies have confirmed that accuracy and surface finish quoted in sales brochures can only achieved under ideal laboratory conditions. Bench marking studies can be time consuming and quite expensive. Moreover RP vendors do not agree on a common benchmark part. This work presents a systematic approach for selection of appropriate R.P. Technology. Analytic Hierarchy process technique developed by Saaty & Kearn (1985) is used to help decision maker to select appropriate technology. A structured Hierarchical model is designed incorporating objective of Rapid Prototyping Technology selection, issues and sub issues involved in Rapid Prototyping Technology selection problem. Pair wise comparison is performed among issues, and further among sub issues using the scale of relative importance as given by Saaty. Eigen values and consistency ratio (Weight) of issues and sub issues are used for computation of grand rating point of different process. Process having highest Grand Rating point is obviously appropriate technology. Methodology is illustrated by assuming a fictitious decision maker to select appropriate Rapid Prototyping Technology. Data have drawn from experience of end users of R.P. system and some data is taken arbitrarily by fictitious decision maker. The methodology is an effective tool for selecting appropriate Rapid Prototyping Technology that best fits end user’s needs. The novel contribution of this work is to develop AHP model based systematic approach to enable the potential academic and industrial users both to select the appropriate Rapid Prototyping Technology for their use. In the future work, we will include decision making uncertainties & risk involving in R.P. technology selection.