EVALUATING MANUFACTURING FLEXIBILITY USING FUZZY MULTIPLE ATTRIBUTE DECISION MAKING

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a fuzzy multi-attribute decision-making algorithm for evaluating flexibility in a manufacturing system development. This evaluation problem is formulated as a multi-attribute decision-making model in a fuzzy environment and solved by a fusion method based on the MEOWA operators. While evaluating the degree of manufacturing flexibility (MF), one may find the need for improving MF, and determine the dimensions of MF as the best directions to the improvement of MF until she/he can accept it. We also show that higher the combination of importance grade and performance rating the higher the degree of MF.

Keywords:

• Manufacturing flexibility
• MEOWA operators
• Two-stage assessment
• Linguistic quantifier