Machine selection in flexible manufacturing cell: A fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making approach

Flexible manufacturing cells (FMC) have been used as a tool to implement flexible manufacturing processes to increase the competitiveness of manufacturing systems. In implementing an FMC, decision-makers encounter the machine selection problem including attributes, e.g. machine type, cost, number of machines, floor space and planned expenditures. This paper proposes a fuzzy multiple attribute decision-making (FMADM) model to assist the decision-maker to deal with the machine selection problem for an FMC realistically and economically. In addition, the membership functions of weights for those attributes are determined in accordance with their distinguishability and robustness when the ranking is performed.