Factors in capital decisions involving advanced manufacturing technologies

This paper presents an integrated framework for the selection of attributes used in the evaluation of advanced manufacturing systems. The Primary focus in the development of this framework is the modularity of the framework so that it is applicable to a wide range of advanced manufacturing systems with differing process configurations and technologies. Based on data collected from industry and the current body of knowledge, decision attributes were identified and ranked relatively against each other, forming a hierarchy of decision attributes. To simplify the hierarchy, making it more user-friendly in real-world applications, each decision attribute was also evaluated relative to the strength of its relationships to other decision attributes. Several decision attributes were found to be highly correlated with others, resulting in a new, single decision attribute. The final decision attribute hierarchy provides managers responsible for making capital decisions involving advanced manufacturing technologies with a framework for their decision making.