Design of a material handling equipment selection model using analytic hierarchy process

Selection of suitable material handling equipment for typical conditions and handling environment is found to be a multi-criteria decision making problem. The selection procedure is found to be unstructured, characterised by extensive domain dependent knowledge and requiring the application of an effective and efficient multi-criteria decision making tool, such as the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP technique breaks down decision making problems into finer parts to allow for easier and more logical selections. The following paper focuses on the application of the AHP technique in selecting the optimal material handling equipment under a specific handling environment. The relative importance of each criteria, subcriteria and sub-subcriteria is measured using pairwise comparison matrices and the overall ranking of each alternative equipment is then determined. Sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the most critical and robust criteria in the material handling equipment selection process.