The purpose of this paper is to develop a decision tool to help managers make more informed decisions regarding their investments in advanced manufacturing technologies.
Selection of a new technology is multidimensional in nature and interdependent relationships exist among various elements of the system. In addition, both quantitative and qualitative factors need to be considered in the evaluation process. The Analytic Network Process (ANP) methodology satisfies these requirements by considering interdependencies among all the factors and by allowing transformation of qualitative judgments into quantitative values for the decision analysis. These capabilities of ANP make it a perfect methodology for use in the development of our decision tool. Once technology alternatives and selection criteria are identified by the decision maker, several pair‐wise comparisons are conducted to determine local priorities for the selection criteria and alternatives. These priorities are then used to determine the overall priorities for the alternatives. The technology alternative with the highest overall priority is chosen for adoption.
Allowing for interdependencies among selection criteria, as well as between alternatives and selection criteria, provides a more realistic evaluation process than other selection processes that ignore such interdependencies.
The model provides decision makers a tool for evaluating several competitive technology alternatives and selecting the most appropriate technology for adoption.
The paper discusses the inclusion of the subjective judgments of the decision maker in the evaluation process and use of ANP methodology for transforming these judgments into quantitative values for rankings of the alternatives.
