An analytical model of process choice in the chemical industry

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical technique for process selection and evaluation for manufacturing systems. This technique which is based on quality function deployment (QFD), analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and analytic network process (ANP) is used to determine the best process for a new facility. The proposed procedure is a novel prescriptive methodology that is applied to a strategic decision problem involving multiple criteria in manufacturing for which comprehensive and sophisticated decision support tools are lacking. The novelty of the outlined technique lies in the fact that customers' preferences concerning the product are taken into consideration in making the process choice. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.