Application of multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis (MOORA) method for materials selection

The role that materials play in the design and proper functioning of the products has already been well acknowledged. An incorrectly selected material for a given product may cause premature failure of the final product. The right choice of the available material is critical to the success and competitiveness of the manufacturing organization. The earlier researchers have attempted to solve the material selection problems employing various mathematical tools and techniques. But it is interesting to note that almost all those techniques are affected by the weights assigned to the considered selection criteria and also by the normalization procedure adopted to make the elements of the decision matrix comparable. Hence, there is an ardent need for a material selection method that would remain unaffected by the criteria weights and normalization procedure. In this paper, multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis (MOORA) method is applied to solve some of the common material selection problems. The performance of the reference point approach and full multiplicative MOORA method are also tested for the considered problems. It is observed that all these three methods are very simple to understand, easy to implement and provide almost exact rankings to the material alternatives. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.