Multiple criteria analysis based robot selection for material handling: A de novo approach

Abstract

A novel Multiple Criteria Analysis (MCA) approach has been proposed for evaluation, selection and ranking of industrial robots, which is hitherto not applied in open literature for the purpose. The current investigation reveals the employability of engineering economy in selection of robots considering multiple conflicting attributes. Aggregate fiscal Terminal Value (TV) of normalized score of alternatives is determined to evaluate Specific Benefit (or Benefit-Cost Ratio) which is considered as the robot selection index. The proposed method has been illustrated with an example in order to demonstrate its aptness as a decision aid. The result so obtained has been compared with other methods and techniques available in papers already published in various journals.