Development of Decision Support System for Material and Manufacturing Process Selection in Polymer-based Products

Abstract

The material and manufacturing process selection problem is a multi-attribute decision making problem where it is important to be made as early as in the preliminary or conceptual design stage. Thus it highlights the significant of a computer aided system in assisting these decisions. This project aims to develop a decision support system for material and manufacturing process selection in polymer-based products. Unlike others similar projects, this project is made as a web-based application which is developed using XAMPP web development package. Three methods of selection were used to determine the compatible material-process selection which are Poli’s, Ashby’s and Boothroyd-Dewhurst’s method. As the result, material and process selector or MANTAPS 1.0 has been successfully developed. This system employed a systematic and formalized decision-making process that help designers to determine material and manufacturing process. It consists of two interconnecting levels of evaluation stages with three different modules which are material selection, manufacturing process selection and aggregation modules. As an additional feature of such decision support system, the product cost estimation is also included to assist designers in further evaluate their options if there are more than one material-process combination are produced at the end of the application.