Material Handling Equipment Selection using Fuzzy Axiomatic Design Principles

Effective movement of raw material, semi-finished and finished products plays an important role in successful operation of any manufacturing organization. Material movement from one workstation to another accounts for about 30 to 40% of the cost of final product. Proper methods adopted for material movement are also important for the overall safety of the personnel involved in the manufacturing processes. So, selection of the appropriate material handling equipment (MHE) is a vital task for improving the productivity of an organization. In today’s technological era, numerous varieties of MHEs are readily available to carry out a desired task. At the same time, depending on the type of material to be moved, there are many conflicting factors influencing the MHE selection decision. For MHE selection, these factors are generally stated in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Hence, the problem of selecting the right type of MHE for a given task can be solved using a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach capable of dealing with a combination of crisp and fuzzy data. In this paper, an MCDM method based on fuzzy axiomatic design principles is applied for selecting the most appropriate MHE. Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers are employed for representing the qualitative attributes and subsequently converting them into crisp values. As a measure of suitability, total information content is calculated for each MHE alternative. The MHE alternative with the least total information content is regarded as the best choice. Two real time MHE selection problems from the literature are solved to establish the applicability and potentiality of the adopted approach.