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Material handling is one of the activities in manufacturing that can drastically affect not only the production cost but also the performance of the entire line, particularly in continuous and transfer manufacturing system. Therefore, selecting the most appropriate material handling equipment is a critical decision that should be could be carefully studied in the early stages of manufacturing system design. This paper is mainly concerned with selecting the most appropriate conveyor for handling ceramic tiles during it production phases. The handling process in this application is characterized by dealing with fragile product as well as exposure to high temperature. Generally, such a decision inherently entails several conflicting qualitative and quantitative criteria. Accordingly, a multi-criteria decision making model has been developed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assist the system designer in selecting the most appropriate conveyor. In this study, four conveyor alternatives have been considered. The results of the model implementation recommended slat conveyors as the best alternative for serving in the ceramic tile manufacturing environment, followed by belt and chain conveyors, while the last one in the ranking is the roller conveyor. Besides, the developed model can be used to perform sensitivity analysis to explore how the decision could be affected in response to changes in the decision maker’s preferences related to the considered criteria. |
