An integrated approach for machine tool selection using fuzzy analytical hierarchy process and grey relational analysis

Selecting a proper machine tool is one of the important decisions a company has to make. Companies which fail to do so face many problems which negatively affect the firm's productivity, flexibility, precision and its responsiveness capabilities. Selection of a machine tool involves a lot of criteria to be simultaneously studied and so it requires a multi-criterion decision making (MCDM) method to solve it. Also the subjectivity involved in such decisions ask for the use of theories such as fuzzy and grey which are very effective in handling subjective inputs. This paper integrates the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relational analysis approaches for the selection of a machine tool from a given set of alternatives. Fuzzy AHP is used to calculate the priority weights of the criteria. Subsequently grey relational analysis (GRA) is employed to rank the alternatives. A well known problem existing in literature has been picked up for the numerical illustration. The results obtained in this paper are better when compared with that existing in literature.