IMPLEMENTATION OF ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) AS A DECISION SUPPORT TOOL FOR SELECTION OF ROBOT FOR SPOT WELDING OPERATION

Rajani P, JawaharBabu A

Abstract: Flexible production lines are most essential for any lean manufacturing system for cost effectiveness. Automobile industry is extensively making use of lean manufacturing philosophy where reduction of waste is paramount importance without sacrificing the quality. Production of an automobile consists of number of phases in which fabrication of body by portable spot welding guns using robots is a significant stage. Robotic Spot welding operation is accomplished to manufacture the body of the automobile, because of its inherent accuracy and repeatability. Robot is a programmable machine which offers flexibility to switch over from one type of model of automobile to another type of model swiftly. But selection of an appropriate robot for the desired task to be accomplished is a crucial decision to be taken. Many factors are to be considered before arriving at an apt decision. Thescenario of this sort may be considered as multi-criteria decisionmaking (MCDM) problem. Though many techniques are available to solve problems of this type, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been selected, because of its strong mathematical basis. In the present paper AHP is implemented to address this MCDM problem which acts as a decision support tool to select an appropriate robot for spot welding operation. Six criteria and eighteen sub-criteria have been considered to rank the robots. Attributes of three alternatives have been compared against criteria and sub-criteria chosen to evaluate the candidate robot

Keywords: Lean manufacturing, robotic spot welding, multi-criteria decision making, analytic hierarchy process (AHP).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2016.0528002