Evaluating flexible manufacturing systems using Euclidean distance-based integrated approach

A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is designed to combine the efficiency of a mass-production line and the flexibility of a job shop to produce a variety of products on a group of machines. Even though a number of studies were proposed in the past to address the issue of evaluation and selection of FMSs, there is a need for a simple and systematic method to guide user organisations in taking a proper decision. In this paper, a new multiple attribute decision making (MADM) method, named as 'Euclidean distance-based approach (EDBA)', is presented for the selection of an FMS from a set of mutually exclusive alternatives. The results are compared with the results obtained by using other decision making methods. The method considers the objective weights of importance of the attributes as well as the subjective preferences of the decision maker to decide the integrated weights of importance of the attributes. Furthermore, the method uses fuzzy logic to convert the qualitative attributes into the quantitative attributes. Three examples are presented to illustrate the potential of the proposed approach.