A Multicriteria Decision-Making Method for Additive Manufacturing Process Selection

Due to the significant differences in the features and requirements of specific products and in the capabilities of various additive manufacturing (AM) solutions, selecting the most appropriate AM technology can be challenging. Given that the AM industry is also rapidly growing, and the capability of each AM technology is changing quickly, all AM processes must be evaluated in line with the latest AM information in order to make a wise selection. For that purpose, decision-makers need a decision-making system that can efficiently integrate their multiple requirements and the appropriate AM technologies. This research proposes a unique multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) solution, which employs an exclusive weightings calculation algorithm that converts the decision-makers\u27 subjective priority of the involved criteria into comparable values. This novel AM process selection system is powered by certainty pairwise comparisons (CPC) to assist decision-makers\u27 selection under ambiguous circumstances. Our CPC decision-making tool pairs each comparison result with its certainty to compute the weightings of the required criteria for the decision-making process. The proposed framework can reduce decision-makers\u27 comparison duty and potentially reduce errors in the pairwise comparisons. It also can be easily combined with other MCDM tools to help them better account for certainty levels and provide a more informed decision. To demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed methodology, a case study describes a detailed industrial application in rapid investment casting that applies the weightings to a tailored AM technologies and materials database to determine the most suitable AM process