Reconfiguring manufacturing systems using an analytic hierarchy process with strategic and operational indicators

In Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS), decision makers often have to select one configuration among a set of available alternatives to meet new, unexpected and unpredictable changes disturbing production. A lot of research has been dedicated to evaluate configuration selection decisions using operational indicators based on performance. Unfortunately, the use of such indicators only may be relatively restrictive and can lead to choose an inefficient configuration. There is a need to include strategic indicators, which reflect both the capacity of the system to evolve and the real operating conditions of the workshop. In this paper, we consider both strategic and operational indicators when evaluating the reconfiguration decisions. We suggest a multi-criteria decision-making approach based on an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assist decision makers in the selection process. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of our approach.