American Journal of Industrial Engineering, 2016, Vol. 4, No.

1, 7-13
Available online at http://pubs.sciepub.com/ajie/4/1/2
© Science and Education Publishing
DOI:10.12691/ajie-4-1-2

Machine Selection by AHP and TOPSIS Methods

Rubayet Karim1,*, C. L Karmaker2
1
Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Jessore University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh
2
Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Jessore University of Science & Technology, Jessore, Bangladesh
*Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract Selection of the most suitable machine is very crucial in the modern economy to prompt production
level as well as revenue generation. In order to endure in the global business scenario, companies must find out the
proper way that leads to the successful production environment. Machine selection has become challenging as the
number of alternatives and conflicting criteria increase. A decision support system has been developed in this
research in machine evaluation process. This framework will act as a guide for decision makers to select the suitable
machine via an integrated approach of AHP & TOPSIS. The anticipated methods in this research consist of two
steps at its core. In the first step, the criteria of the existing problem are inspected and identified and then the weights
of the sector and sub-sector are determined that have come to light by using AHP. In the second step, eligible
alternatives are ranked by using TOPSIS. A demonstration of the application of these methodologies in a real life
problem is presented.
Keywords: multi criteria decision making, machine selection, decision support system, AHP, TOPSIS
Cite This Article: Rubayet Karim, and C. L Karmaker, “Machine Selection by AHP and TOPSIS Methods.”
American Journal of Industrial Engineering, vol. 4, no. 1 (2016): 7-13. doi: 10.12691/ajie-4-1-2.

analyze in order to keep the production line smoothly as

well as provide high -quality parts that best matches the
1. Introduction needs of its target customer. The manufacturers need to
pay attention to deal with this challenge of selecting the
Recently, to acquire the competitive advantages in most suitable machine in order to ensure full workability
order to survive in the global business scenario, the as well as the complete safety of their unit.
selection of the most appropriate machine has become a To select the desired machine, a company must
remarkable concern for many manufacturing companies. It undertake some pragmatic steps that comply with its
is very crucial in industries where machines are mission and strategy. The general steps for making
intensively used to prompt production level as well as machine selection decisions usually consist of the
revenue generation. To survive in the modern economy, following steps: Decide on the criteria that will be used to
companies must be careful in making decisions. Improper evaluate machine; select the criteria that are important;
decisions, increase companies’ costs in terms of resource developing alternatives and select the alternatives
wastage as well as affect customer satisfaction. Modern evaluated [12].
manufacturing companies are now facing some problems In order to select the most suitable machine among
like the selection of machines because of time various alternatives, the decision maker must consider
consumption & lack of advanced knowledge as well as meaningful criteria & possess special knowledge of the
experience. The difficulty of the machine evaluation and machine properties. But those criteria should be
selection problem has driven the researchers to develop considered that maximize the benefit of the manufacturing
models for helping decision-makers. company. Gerrard [7] conducted a survey to determine the
The aim of machine selection decision by a manufacturing percentage contribution of various levels of management.
company often persuades the owner, investors, partners, The result indicated that the role of engineering staff in the
employees, and other stakeholders to maintain a certain selection process was only 6 percent; the remaining (94
point of view about it, its productivity, efficiency, revenue percent) belongs to top & middle management. It also
generation or of its total costing. gave a signal of the abridged approach for the machine
The strategic decision, backed by the company, is to be evaluation process. In this study, the evaluation criteria for
implemented effectively to increase productivity & safety. the selection decision were selected from the studies in the
As it requires a large investment and since it is literature and the discussions with the company’s
irrecoverable in most of the instances, the choice of a managers in different areas.
machine selection among eligible alternatives is a very A number of alternatives and conflicting criteria are
powerful decision. Some researchers have pointed out the increasing very rapidly. So, robust evaluation models are
dramatic results in quality, flexibility, productivity, etc. crucial in order to incorporate several conflicting criteria
for taking poor decisions of machine selection [1]. As meritoriously. With its need to trade-off multiple criteria,
decisions regarding machines are a crucial element in a the selection problem like machine selection is a multi-
company’s quality success or failure, companies must criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. To evaluate
8 American Journal of Industrial Engineering

the machine selection process, different methods have 2. MCDM Methods

been widely applied in the literature: analytic hierarchy
process (AHP), fuzzy multiple attribute decision- making Multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) or
model, linear 0-1 integer programming, weighted average Multiple-criteria decision making (MCDM) is a sub-
method, genetic algorithms etc. are some of these methods. discipline and full-grown branch of operations research
In this research, a prototype framework using AHP & that is concerned with designing mathematical and
TOPSIS methods has been employed to evaluate the computational tools to support the subjective evaluation of
selection of the suitable machine to prompt the production a finite number of decision alternatives under a finite
level. number of performance criteria by a single decision maker
The machine selection problem has been studied mostly or by a group [10]. MCDM refers to screening,
for specific type of environment, such as flexible prioritizing, ranking, or selecting a set of alternatives
manufacturing systems [1]. Somashekhar [10] presented a under usually independent, incommensurate or conflicting
structure that included a tailor-made package in order to attributes [8]. Determining the attributes is very crucial to
design & evaluate flexible manufacturing systems for MCDM as they play a very substantial role in the decision
small prismatic components. Dong-Shang Chang [6] used making process. Several methods have been proposed for
stochastic linear programming model for the evaluation of solving related problems, but a major problem of MCDM
the opportunity cost of flexible manufacturing systems is that different techniques may yield different results for
(FMS). In addition, Tabucanon et al. [13] proposed a the same problem.
decision support system to select the appropriate machine Therefore, how making a trade-off between these
of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Arslan [1] conflicting attributes and then make a decision could pose
developed a decision support system that included a difficult problem [5]. The evaluation procedure in this
qualitative and quantitative criteria to assist the decision paper consists of three main steps as summarized in
maker in solving, selection problem using multi-criteria Figure 1.
weighted average method. The objective of the study was
to select the most suitable machine from available
machines aiming the reduction of difficulties arising from
the selection process. Besides the assessable aspects of the
machine selection decision, soft criteria having subjective
factors that are difficult to enumerate, are needed to be
measured.
In real world applications, assessment of eligible
alternatives for subjective criteria is expressed in linguistic
terms. For this, several researchers have incorporated
fuzzy set theory to efficiently resolve the ambiguity
obtained from the available information [9]. The fuzzy set
theory seems as an operative tool in dealing with the
imprecise or uncertainty intrinsic in the location selection
process. In the literature, there are a number of studies that
apply different fuzzy based decision making techniques in
order to classify locations.
A number of studies have focused on the use of fuzzy
multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) techniques for
machine selection process. Wang et al. [15] offered a
structured framework based on the fuzzy multiple attribute
decision making approach for machine selection in a
flexible manufacturing cell. The objective of the model Figure 1. Steps of evaluation procedure
was to help decision maker in dealing difficulty arising Step 1: Identify the evaluation criteria considered as the
from machine selection problem. most important performance measures for the machine
In this paper, an integrated approach of AHP & selection problem.
TOPSIS methods has been utilized. The aim of this study Step 2: Construct the hierarchy of the evaluation criteria
is to propose a model to evaluate the best machine by and calculate the weights of these criteria using the AHP
using the comparison of three existing machines. During method.
the assessment procedure, AHP method has been applied Step 3: Conduct the TOPSIS method to achieve the final
to determine the weights of the criteria and to rank the ranking results.
machines, TOPSIS method has been used. The detailed descriptions of each step are illustrated in
The rest of this study is arranged as follows: Section 2 the following sections.
frameworks the methodology and provides a stepwise
depiction of the anticipated multi-criteria decision making 2.1. Determining the Criteria Weights by
approach. In Section 3, the application of the proposed
framework for the selection of machine has been given.
AHP
And finally, in section four, the result of the application The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a multiple
has been presented and insights for the future studies are criteria decision making tool for organizing and analyzing
clarified. This section wraps up this study. complex decisions and firstly developed by Thomas L.
Saaty [11]. This method is used to solve a complex
 American Journal of Industrial Engineering 9

decision making problem having several attributes by E = N th rootvalue / ∑ N th rootvalue (4)

modeling unstructured problem under study into hierarchical
n
∑ aij ∗ e j1
forms of elements. The essential components of a
=
Rowmatrix (5)
hierarchical system are the main goal, criteria that affect
j =1
the overall goal, sub-criteria that influence the main-
criteria and finally the alternatives available to the problem. Step 6: Calculate the maximum Eigenvalue, λmax .
To obtain the degree of relative importance of elements at
each level, a pairwise comparison matrix is developed λmax = Rowmatrix / E (6)
using Saaty 1-9 preference scale as shown in Table 1.
Then the eigenvector and the maximum eigenvalue (λmax) Step 7: Calculate the consistency index & consistency
are derived from pairwise comparison matrices. The ratio.
significance of the eigenvalue is to assess the strength of CI = ( λmax − n ) / ( n − 1) (7)
the consistency ratio CR (Saaty, 2000) of the comparative
matrix in order to validate whether the pairwise CR = CI / RI (8)
comparison matrix provides a completely consistent
Where n & RI denote the order of matrix & Randomly
evaluation. The final step is to derive the consistency
Generated Consistency Index respectively.
index and consistency ratio.

Table 1. Saaty’s pairwise comparison scale 2.2. Ranking Alternatives by TOPSIS

Scale Compare factor of I & j For the assessment of machine selection, one of the
1 Equally Important MCDM methods named TOPSIS has been applied in this
3 Weakly Important research. In this section, TOPSIS method is explained.
5 Strongly Important TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity
7 Very strongly Important to Ideal Solution), developed by Hwang and Yoon [19], is
9 Extremely Important one of the MCDA/MCDM methods for resolving real-
2,4,6,8 Intermediate value between adjacent scales world decision problems satisfactorily. TOPSIS attempts
The stepwise procedure of AHP is presented as follows: to indicate the best alternative that simultaneously has the
Step 1: Construct the structural hierarchy. shortest distance from the positive ideal solution and the
Step 2: Construct the pairwise comparison matrix. farthest distance from the negative ideal solution [2]. The
Assuming n attributes, the pairwise comparison of positive ideal solution is a solution that tries to maximize
attribute i with attribute j yields a square matrix An×n the profit criteria and minimize the cost criteria, whereas
where aij denotes the comparative importance of attribute i the negative ideal solution is just opposite to previous one
with respect to attribute j. In the matrix, aij = 1 when i = j [4,14,16,17]. According to Wang 2007, the positive ideal
and aji = 1/aij. solution is composed of all the good values attainable of
criteria, whereas the negative ideal solution consists of all
Attribute worst values attainable of criteria. In the TOPSIS method,
 a11 a12 a13 .... .... a1n 
1 a a23 .... .... a2n 
precise scores that each alternative receives from all the
2  21 a22 criteria are used in the formation of a decision matrix and
 a31 a32 a33 .... .... a3n  normalized decision matrix. By taking into consideration
An×n = 3  
 .... .... .... .... .... ....  the rates of all attributes, positive and negative ideal
....
 .... .... .... .... .... .... 
solutions are found. By comparing the distance coefficient
....   of each alternative, the preference order of the alternatives
n  an1 an 2 rn3 .... .... ann  is determined.
The stepwise procedure of Hwang and Yoon [8] for
Step 3: Construct normalized decision matrix implementing TOPSIS is presented as follows:
Step 1: Construct normalized decision matrix of beneficial
n
cij = aij ∑ aij (1)
and non-beneficial criteria.
J =1 xij
=i 1,=
2,3,......., n, j 1, 2,3,......., n = rij = =
, j 1, 2,3,..........., J ; i 1, 2,3,........., n (9)
∑ j =1 xij2
J
Step 4: Construct the weighted, normalized decision
matrix
Where xij and rij are original and the normalized score of
n
=wi ∑
= cij / n, i 1, 2,3,......., n (2) decision matrix respectively.
Step 2: Construct the weighted normalized decision matrix
J =1
by multiplying the weights wi of evaluation criteria with
 w1  the normalized decision matrix rij.
w 
 2 vij =wi ∗ rij , j =1, 2,3,......., J , i =1, 2,3,......., n (10)
W = .  (3)
  Step 3: Determined the positive ideal solution (PIS) and
 .  negative ideal solution (NIS)
 wn 

Step 5: Calculate Eigenvector & Row matrix

{ }
A* = v1* , v2* ,........, vn* max imum values (11)
10 American Journal of Industrial Engineering

Where vi* = {max(vij ) if j ∈ J ; min(vij ) if j ∈ J − } w1 = 1.40 × 1 =

7
0.20 w5 = 0.69 × 1 = 0.10
7

{ }
A− = v1− , v2− ,........, vn− minimum values (12)
w2 = 0.30 × 1 =
7
0.04 w6 = 0.19 × 1 = 0.03
7
w3 = 3.00 × 1 = 0.43 w7 = 0.47 × 1 = 0.07
7 7
Where v − ={min(vij ) if j ∈ J ; max(vij ) if j ∈ J − } .
w4 = 0.97 × 1 = 0.14
Step 4: Calculate the separation measures of each 7
alternative from PIS and NIS
Table 2. Hierarchical Representation of Criteria

( )
Criteria Symbol
di*=
n * 2 j 1, 2,......., J (13)
∑ vij − v j , = Productivity C1
Flexibility C2
j =1 Cost C3
Main Criteria Quality C4

( )
− 2 i 1, 2,......., J
n
di−=
Reliability C5
∑ vij − v j , = (14) Service facility C6
j =1 Safety C7
M/C Speed C11
Step 5: Calculate the relative closeness coefficient to the Productivity Parts Change time C12
ideal solution of each alternative Setup time C13
Use of diff. dimension Of needle C21
di− Easy to operate C22
=CCi = , i 1, 2,......., J . (15) Easy to move C23
di* + di−
Flexibility
Diff. types of stitch operation C24
M/C can handle multiple
C25
Step 6: Based on the decreasing values of closeness operation
coefficient, alternatives are ranked from most valuable to M/C Cost C31
Maintenance cost C32
worst. The alternative having highest closeness coefficient Cost
Energy cost C33
( CCi ) is selected. Parts cost C34
Quality of operation C41
Sub Criteria
Number of m/c (Needle)
Quality C42
breakdown
3. Proposed Framework with Example Running thread cut-off C43
Life time of the m/c C51
A comparison of three existing machines of the Reliability Oil leakage rate C52
renowned company in Bangladesh serves to validate the Professional skill C53
model by testing the propositions that were developed. To Communication Capability C61
Service Warranty C62
preserve confidentiality, the name of the company has
Service facility Parts Warranty C63
been keeping undisclosed and the three machines are On time delivery C64
referenced as A1, A2 and A3. The Company desires to Lead time of m/c delivery C65
decide which machine among the three alternatives a Safe guards C71
machine should be selected based on its vision and Safety Safety Device C72
strategy. First of all, the evaluation criteria for the Ergonomically C73
selection decision were taken from the studies in the
Table 3. Aggregated pair-wise comparison matrix
literature and the discussions with the company’s
C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7
managers in different areas. The hierarchical structure
C1 1 5 0.2 1 5 7 5
which contains 7 main criteria and 26 sub-criteria for the C2 0.2 1 0.14 0.2 0.33 3 0.33
selection of the best alternative among three machines is C3 5 7 1 7 5 7 5
constructed in Table 2. C4 1 3 0.14 1 3 5 3
The weights of the main criteria and the sub-criteria C5 0.2 3 0.2 0.33 1 5 3
considering the decision makers’ subjective judgments are C6 0.14 0.33 0.14 0.2 0.2 1 0.33
estimated by using AHP. A pairwise comparison matrix of C7 0.2 3 0.2 0.33 0.33 3 1
the main criteria (Table 3) and the calculation of the
weights are given as follows. A normalized matrix, C has Table 4. Weights of sub-criteria
been calculated by using Eq. (1): Sub-criteria Weight Sub-criteria Weight
C11 0.11 C42 0.14
 0.13 0.22 0.10 0.10 0.34 0.23 0.28  C12 0.26 C43 0.18
 0.03 0.04 0.07 0.02 0.02 0.10 0.02  C13 0.63 C51 0.72
 C21 0.10 C52 0.08
 0.65 0.31 0.50 0.70 0.34 0.23 0.28  C22 0.46 C53 0.19
 
C =  0.13 0.13 0.07 0.10 0.20 0.16 0.17  . C23 0.07 C61 0.06
 0.03 0.13 0.10 0.03 0.07 0.16 0.17 
C24 0.17 C62 0.35
  C25 0.21 C63 0.31
0.02 0.01 0.07 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.02  C31 0.52 C64 0.18
 0.13 0.10 0.03 0.02 0.10 0.06  C32 0.06 C65 0.11
 0.03 C33 0.28 C71 0.26
Then the priority weights are calculated by using Eq.(2): C34 0.15 C72 0.11
C41 0.69 C73 0.63
 American Journal of Industrial Engineering 11

The normalized weight vector respect to the main decision makers’ subjective judgments which are followed
criteria is W = ( 0.20, 0.04, 0.43, 0.14, 0.10, 0.03, 0.07 ) . The by the others. The same computational ways are
anticipated to determine the weights of the sub-criteria
normalized weight vector respect to the main goal is
portrayed in Figure 2. According to Figure 2, the most ( wi ) which are presented in Table 4.
valuable criteria having priority of 0.43 is “Cost” in the
Table 5. Decision matrix for TOPSIS method
A1 A2 A3
D1 D2 D3 D1 D2 D3 D1 D2 D3
C11 9 9 7 7 8 8 8 6 8
C12 7 7 8 6 8 7 8 6 7
C13 8 7 7 8 8 8 8 6 8
C21 7 9 9 8 8 8 6 6 8
C22 8 7 8 6 6 8 6 6 6
C23 7 9 8 6 6 5 5 5 6
C24 7 8 8 8 6 7 6 6 6
C25 7 8 7 7 6 8 6 6 8
C31 6 7 6 3 4 6 7 8 6
C32 8 6 7 6 5 6 7 8 7
C33 6 5 7 6 6 6 6 8 8
C34 5 5 6 5 5 7 6 6 8
C41 8 6 7 9 9 7 6 6 8
C42 7 9 7 8 8 8 8 6 8
C43 7 7 9 8 8 6 8 6 6
C51 8 7 6 8 9 7 6 6 5
C52 6 6 8 9 9 9 6 6 5
C53 7 7 9 8 9 8 5 5 5
C61 5 5 5 8 7 9 6 6 7
C62 5 6 5 7 7 7 7 7 6
C63 5 3 5 8 8 9 5 6 7
C64 5 6 5 9 9 9 8 7 6
C65 6 6 5 8 7 9 7 6 7
C71 9 9 7 6 6 6 5 5 6
C72 7 7 8 6 6 7 5 5 5
C73 9 9 9 8 7 8 6 6 5

Table 6. Aggregated decision matrix of TOPSIS method

A1 A2 A3
C11 8.333333 7.666666667 7.333333
C12 7.333333 7 7
C13 7.333333 8 7.333333
C21 8.333333 8 6.666667
C22 7.666667 6.666666667 6
C23 8 5.666666667 5.333333
C24 7.666667 7 6
C25 7.333333 7 6.666667
C31 6.333333 4.333333333 7
C32 7 5.666666667 7.333333
C33 6 6 7.333333
C34 5.333333 5.666666667 6.666667
C41 7 8.333333333 6.666667
C42 7.666667 8 7.333333
C43 7.666667 7.333333333 6.666667
C51 7 8 5.666667
C52 6.666667 9 5.666667
C53 7.666667 8.333333333 5
C61 5 8 6.333333
C62 5.333333 7 6.666667
C63 4.333333 8.333333333 6
C64 5.333333 9 7
C65 5.666667 8 6.666667
C71 8.333333 6 5.333333
C72 5.333333 7.666666667 7
C73 5.333333 7 6.666667
12 American Journal of Industrial Engineering

Table 7. Calculation steps of the TOPSIS method for the machine selection process.
Weighted normalized values
PIS (A*) NIS (A-)
A1 A2 A3
C11 0.0656 0.0603 0.0577 0.0656 0.0577
C12 0.1551 0.1480 0.1480 0.1480 0.1551
C13 0.3546 0.3868 0.3546 0.3546 0.3868
C21 0.0602 0.0578 0.0481 0.0602 0.0481
C22 0.2968 0.2581 0.2322 0.2968 0.2322
C23 0.0480 0.0340 0.0320 0.0480 0.0320
C24 0.1088 0.0994 0.0852 0.1088 0.0852
C25 0.1268 0.1210 0.1153 0.1268 0.1153
C31 0.3142 0.2150 0.3472 0.2150 0.3472
C32 0.0348 0.0282 0.0365 0.0282 0.0365
C33 0.1507 0.1507 0.1841 0.1507 0.1841
C34 0.0757 0.0804 0.0946 0.0757 0.0946
C41 0.3758 0.4473 0.3579 0.4473 0.3579
C42 0.0785 0.0819 0.0750 0.0750 0.0819
C43 0.1095 0.1047 0.0952 0.0952 0.1095
C51 0.4204 0.4805 0.3403 0.4805 0.3403
C52 0.0442 0.0597 0.0376 0.0376 0.0597
C53 0.1197 0.1301 0.0780 0.1301 0.0780
C61 0.0255 0.0409 0.0324 0.0409 0.0255
C62 0.1680 0.2206 0.2101 0.2206 0.1680
C63 0.1189 0.2286 0.1646 0.2286 0.1189
C64 0.0774 0.1307 0.1016 0.1307 0.0774
C65 0.0259 0.0366 0.0305 0.0259 0.0366
C71 0.1876 0.1351 0.1201 0.1876 0.1201
C72 0.0485 0.0697 0.0637 0.0697 0.0485
C73 0.3060 0.4016 0.3824 0.4016 0.3060
d* 0.215625 0.080073 0.254601
d- 0.149411 0.279287 0.111506

CCi 0.409305 0.777178 0.304573

Figure 2. Normalized weights of main criteria

Table 8. Ranking of the machine selection The eigenvector of the relative importance of the main-
Order Alternatives Closeness coefficients criteria is (0.20, 0.04, 0.44, 0.15, 0.09, 0.03, 0.06). To
1 A2 0.777178 calculate λmax,, elements of the row matrix are estimated
2 A1 0.409305 by using Eq. (5) and forms as (1.55, 0.29, 3.66, 1.10, 0.69,
3 A3 0.304573 0.19, 0.46). Eq. (6) gives the four estimates of λmax & the
mean of these values (7.75) is the estimated λmax.
2.09 ⊗ (1/10.43) =
w1 = 0.93 ⊗ (1/ 10.43) =
0.20 w5 = 0.09
Consistency Index (CI) & Consistency Ratio (CR) are
0.41 (1/10.43) =
w2 =⊗ 0.26 (1/10.43) =
0.04 w6 =⊗ 0.03 calculated through Eqs. (7) & (8) respectively (for
4.59 ⊗ (1/10.43) = 0.63 ⊗ (1/10.43) =
RI=1.32). As the value of CR (0.09) is less than 0.10, it is
w3 = 0.44 w7 = 0.06
accepted.
1.52 (1/10.43) =
w4 =⊗ 0.15 As indicated before, one of well-known MCDM
methods named TOPSIS method is used to rank the
The elements of eigenvector are calculated by using Eq. potential alternatives considering the weights of all criteria
(4).
 American Journal of Industrial Engineering 13

which are obtained by AHP. In the first step of the Acknowledgements

algorithm, a decision matrix using three decision makers’
opinion (D1, D2, D3) is developed using numerical values. The authors wish to acknowledge the support and
The decision matrix of TOPSIS method is shown in Table 5. assistance provided by the Department of Industrial and
Then, the aggregated values of each sub-criterion are Production Engineering, Jessore University Science and
calculated by using the average technique in TOPSIS Technology, Bangladesh. The efforts of the chairman of
method as shown in Table 6. After calculating the the department, teachers and students who collaborated in
aggregated values of the sub-criteria, eligible locations are this study are also appreciated.
ranked by using TOPSIS method. These aggregated
values are the main input. Normalization of these values is
made through Eq. (9). The positive and negative ideal References
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ELECTRE; PROMETHEE; MOORA and ORESTE can
be used comparatively in a fuzzy environment and the
results can be compared.