Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) in Evaluating the Decision of Moving to a Manufacturing Process Based Upon Continuous 5 Axes CNC Machine-tools

This paper represents the second part of the work described in the paper with the title “Decision-making tool for moving from 3-axes to 5-axes CNC machine-tool”. The problem of using either 3 axes CNC machine-tools or 5 axes CNC machine tools was presented in the first part, together with a fuzzy logic based decision support tool. This time, an AHP approach is used in order to evaluate the decision of moving to a manufacturing process based upon 5 axes machine tools. Three variants were taken into consideration and analysed. The consistency of the proposed approach was evaluated and a sensitivity analysis was also introduced.