The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-018-2958-x

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Human, AGV or AIV? An integrated framework for material handling

system selection with real-world application in an injection molding
facility
William Hellmann1 · Dean Marino1 · Mohamed Megahed1 · Merlin Suggs1 · Jeffrey Borowski1 ·
Ashkan Negahban1

Received: 31 July 2018 / Accepted: 29 October 2018

© Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
Motivated by a real-world material handling system selection problem, this paper proposes a framework that allows
for quantifying safety and incorporating it in multi-criteria decision-making processes that involve both quantitative and
qualitative measures. In the proposed framework, the results of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) for each alternative
are converted into a quantitative measure of total safety and reliability associated with that alternative. A modified
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that differentiates between subjective and objective measures is then used to compare the
alternatives at hand. In this modified AHP, experts’ judgments are used for pairwise comparison of alternatives with respect
to qualitative measures, while for quantitative criteria, measured or estimated performance is directly used to obtain the
required pairwise comparisons. An Excel-based decision support tool that implements the proposed framework is developed
and made available online for researchers and practitioners. An application based on a real-world problem in an injection
molding facility is also presented.

Keywords Multi-criteria decision-making · Analytic hierarchy process · Failure mode and effect analysis ·
Automated guided vehicle · Automated intelligent vehicle

1 Introduction or carousels running through aisles/racks horizontally

Material handling is a critical component in many systems
ranging from manufacturing [1, 2] and distribution centers
[3] to mining [4] and container terminals [5]. In manufac-
turing, material handling activities account for a significant
portion of total manufacturing costs (different estimates
have been reported that range from 15 to 70% [1, 6]). Mate-
rial handling is also known to play a crucial role in enhanc-
ing productivity, flexibility, agility, and resource utilization
[1]. Over the past few decades, material handling technolo-
gies have evolved from traditional hand trucks, carts, lift
trucks, overhead cranes, and conveyors into more advanced
forms including but not limited to:
– Automated storage and retrieval systems (AS/RS)
that typically consist of computer-controlled cranes
 Ashkan Negahban
anegahban@psu.edu
1 School of Graduate Professional Studies, The Pennsylvania
State University, Malvern, PA 19355, USA
and/or vertically.
– Industrial robots that utilize an end of arm tooling
(EOAT) attachment to hold, manipulate, and move parts
and are directed by a combination of programmable
software, sensors, and other controls.
– Automated guided vehicles (AGV) are computer-
controlled and wheel-based that travel along the floor
of a facility without an on-board operator and their
movement is directed by a combination of software and
sensor-based guidance systems.
– Automated intelligent vehicles (AIV) are among the
more recent technologies that do not have infrastructure
requirements such as the guided paths made with wires,
magnetic tapes, or laser paths on the shop floor that
AGVs typically need. Therefore, AIVs can be deployed
rapidly without the need for workspace retrofits. AIVs
can function autonomously (not just automatically) and
react to obstacles as opposed to traditional AGVs that
follow fixed pre-programmed paths and cannot drive
around obstacles. Moreover, AIVs can communicate
and adapt to dynamic environments allowing them to
plan alternate routes and work collaboratively in a fleet

that enables automatic and dynamic selection of the
optimal vehicle to dispatch. For a sample of recent
papers that study the use of AIVs as material handling
equipment, see [7–9].
In many cases, when making decisions about a new or
improved facility, multiple alternatives exist, among which,
the most appropriate material handling technology needs
to be selected. However, this is a difficult decision-making
problem as there are many quantitative (e.g., load capacity,
cost, and energy consumption) and qualitative criteria (e.g.,
flexibility, reliability, and safety) to be considered, making
this a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem.
Due to the importance of material handling as a determinant
of system performance and their high implementation
costs, effective decision-making requires a careful and
joint consideration and evaluation of both quantitative and
qualitative criteria.
Motivated by a real-world project at an injection mold-
ing facility in Pennsylvania, USA, this paper proposes a
framework to be used during the design stage for a new
or improved facility and help select an appropriate mate-
rial handling technology among a list of options when
the optimal design, operation and control policies for each
option have already been determined. This novel framework
integrates failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and
analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to evaluate and consider
both quantitative and qualitative criteria and support effec-
tive decision-making. To the best of our knowledge, this
is the first study in the context of material handling selec-
tion that explicitly evaluates safety and reliability (using
FMEA) and incorporates these considerations in a modified
AHP that differentiates between qualitative and quantita-
tive criteria, where experts’ judgments are used to compare
alternatives with respect to qualitative criteria (as in the tra-
ditional AHP), while measured/estimated performance are
used for pairwise comparisons with respect to quantita-
tive criteria. Moreover, we develop an Excel-based decision
support tool that implements the proposed methodology.
The tool is made available online and hopes to trigger and
facilitate future applications of the proposed framework by
researchers and practitioners in any other decision-making
problem that requires integration of FMEA and AHP. There-
fore, the contributions of this paper are based on both
methodological and practical grounds.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 provides a critical analysis of the literature.
Section 3 describes the real-world material handling sys-
tem selection problem that motivated this work. Section 4
presents the integrated methodology and illustrates its effec-
tiveness in supporting decision-making through its appli-
cation in the injection molding facility under study. The
section also describes a tool developed based on the
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
proposed framework and currently being used by the
company. Finally, Section 5 provides the concluding
remarks and potential avenues for future extensions.
2 Literature review
There is a massive body of literature on optimization and
evaluation of the design, operation, and control of material
handling systems, namely flow path layout, number and
location of pickup and delivery points, collision avoidance
and deadlocks, and vehicle requirements, dispatching,
routing, and idle position. Several survey papers provide
a review of these studies [1, 2, 10]. Esmaeilian et
al. [1] classify the literature on material handling for
manufacturing systems into four main categories, namely
design, operation, control, and selection. This paper deals
with the latter, i.e., the technology selection problem. In this
section, we focus on recent studies on the application of
FMEA and MCDM approaches in manufacturing systems
and the material handling selection problem in particular
with the goal to illustrate the strengths and gaps in the
existing literature and highlight the contributions of this
work.
2.1 FMEA in manufacturing system design
and operation
The traditional FMEA is a commonly used tool for
assessing the risk of possible design and process failures in
manufacturing systems. For instance, Ozkok [11] considers
the hull structure production process of a shipyard and uses
historical data to determine the probability and severity of
the failure modes identified. Ocampo et al. [12] provide
an analysis of various analysis tools on competitiveness of
advanced manufacturing with a special focus on the apparel
industry in Central America. They recommend FMEA as a
useful tool for improving delivery time, cost, environmental
impacts, and flexibility.
The majority of FMEA applications in manufacturing,
however, involve integrated frameworks that combine mul-
tiple tools. Mejjaouli and Babiceanu [13] propose a holistic
simulation-based monitoring and fault-recovery system that
combines sensor network and distributed computing tech-
nologies with FMEA to improve agility and response to
real-time uncertainties in a manufacturing environment.
Kuo and Huang [14] propose an expert system integrating
a colored timed Petri net (CTPN), FMEA, and statistical
process control to enhance monitoring of flexible manufac-
turing systems (FMS). Shah et al. [15] propose a general
value-risk based decision-making tool that combines per-
formance and risk with the decision-making process, where
FMEA is used to assess and prioritize the risk factors
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
identified in a manufacturing system. Chemweno et al. [16]
propose a methodology combining FMEA, Fault Tree Anal-
ysis, Bayesian Networks, and Analytic Network Process
(ANP) for decision-making related to maintenance oper-
ations and illustrate the application of their approach in
a process industry and an assembly line. Almannai et al.
[17] propose an integrated tool combining FMEA and Qual-
ity Function Deployment (QFD) for selection of automa-
tion technologies and present an application of the tool in
the Rolls-Royce’ compression systems plant in Inchinnan,
Scotland for selection of chip forming machines.
It is widely accepted that FMEA is useful (and often rec-
ommended) prior to implementation of complex systems,
such as a material handling system, to assess safety and reli-
ability issues, identify potential effects that might arise from
component/system malfunctions and failures, and deter-
mine critical system components and potential risks early
in the design stage [18, 19]. In fact, the rise in focus on
safety, reliability, and risk management and mitigation has
made FMEA an integral part of Six Sigma, Production
Part Approval Process (PPAP), Advanced Product Quality
Planning (APQP), Tooling and Equipment (TE 9000), ISO
9000, QS 9000, and ISO/TS16949 standards, all requiring
or recommending the use of FMEA [20]. Nevertheless, our
literature review reveals that there is no article that use
FMEA, either by itself or as part of an integrated method-
ology, specifically to solve a material handling selection
problem—a gap in this stream of research that this paper
aims to address.
2.2 MCDM methods for material handling system
selection
Our focus here is on studies that use MCDM approaches
for selection of an appropriate material handling system.
There are only a few studies that use only a single MCDM
approach (this is also confirmed by the literature review
in [6]). For example, Chakraborty and Banik [21] use
AHP and identify the most critical and robust criteria in
the material handling equipment selection process through
sensitivity analysis. The majority of the studies in this
context, however, employ integrated MCDM approaches.
To name a few, Onut et al. [6] use a fuzzy Technique for
Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)
to make a selection by using the criteria weights assigned by
a fuzzy ANP method. In a similar study, an integrated fuzzy
AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS is proposed for AS/RS selection
[22]. Chan et al. [23] propose a tool consisting of three
modules, namely a database to store specifications of the
different alternatives, a knowledge-based expert system, and
an AHP module to select an appropriate equipment type.
For another study that uses a similar methodology, see [24].
Braglia et al. [25] use AHP in conjunction with an integer
programming model to account for the different constraints
that need to be considered by the decision-maker.
Our analysis of this stream of research shows that
an integrated framework combining MCDM methods and
FMEA (which is known to be a powerful tool for assessing
safety and reliability) is missing. This is an important gap
since the safety of personnel, equipment, and products is
often among the top priorities (if not the highest priority)
in virtually any company. Therefore, this paper contributes
to this stream of research by proposing a framework that
integrates FMEA and AHP for evaluating and incorporating
safety and reliability considerations in the decision-making
process for selecting an appropriate material handling
technology. It is worth noting that, while other MCDM
techniques could be adopted, the authors chose AHP as it
is the most commonly used MCDM method for material
handling selection [6].
3 Problem description: human, AGV or AIV?
We present the proposed methodology in the context of
a real-world material handling system selection problem
at a manufacturing company in Pennsylvania, USA, that
motivated this work in the first place. The company’s
name and details of the facility layout as well as
production and financial data are disguised to protect
the company’s proprietary information. The names of the
vendor companies that supply and install the alternative
material handling technologies are also disguised.
The company is a premier manufacturer of hinges, latch
and lock systems, swinghandle and multi-point systems,
rivets, and display mounts and has facilities in North
America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For one of their plants,
the company has a goal of improving the material handling
process between the injection molding facility and the
storage area. Figure 1 provides a simplified layout of the
injection molding facility under study. Each cell in the
facility consists of multiple machines (there are more than
sixty machines distributed among these cells). The products
produced by the machines in each cell are placed in boxes
that may contain hundreds or thousands of parts depending
on the size of the product being produced. These boxes are
then placed in the corresponding pickup location(s) for that
cell once they are ready to be picked up and transported to
the storage area.
There is currently no automated process for transporting
products between the two areas or for loading/unloading of
materials. These are performed by an operator using a pow-
ered jack truck. There is an interest to determine whether
there might be advantages in using robotic solutions. The
motivation and potential benefit for improving this pro-
cess is that while the material is being transported from

Fig. 1 The layout, pickup points, and picking routes for the injection
molding facility. As for the picking route, the material handling
operator/equipment would go to a specific pickup location and return
to the storage area with a package/pallet. They would then move to
a subsequent pickup location to retrieve the material. The company
refers to this approach as star picking
one portion of the facility to another via an AGV or AIV,
the current material handler can focus on putting materi-
als away in the storage facility. The candidate solutions
(alternatives) identified by the company are (1) hiring addi-
tional material handlers, (2) install an AGV system, or (3)
install an AIV system. The company has also determined a
set of objectives/criteria for evaluating the alternatives: (1)
payback period, (2) surplus capacity defined as the poten-
tial to handle increased demand/production in the future,
(3) congestion, (4) ease of implementation and control, and
(5) safety and reliability. In particular, safety and reliability
of the system to be installed is extremely important to the
company executives.
The company has identified a set of AGV and AIV
vendors, who have provided cost estimates for acquisition
and maintaining the respective technology as well as the
optimal design and operating policy for their proposed
solution if selected and implemented. Table 1 provides the
number of transporters required, surplus capacity, and the
estimated payback period for the six alternatives under
investigation. The surplus capacity for each alternative
represents the (nominal) maximum number of boxes that
can be transported per day using the material handling
system minus the current average daily production (boxes
per day). The company uses the number of transporters
as a measure of congestion in the facility caused by
material handling operations. The payback period for each
alternative is estimated based on its initial cost, estimated
monthly operating and maintenance costs, and expected
revenue increase due to improved throughput. Since the
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
Table 1 Estimated performance of the alternatives considered by the
company with respect to quantitative measures
Alternative Number of Surplus capacity Payback period
transporters (boxes per day) (months)
required
AGV 1 (vendor 1) 3 460 52
AGV 2 (vendor 2) 3 270 43
AGV 3 (vendor 3) 4 220 75
AIV 1 (vendor 4) 5 300 84
AIV 2 (vendor 5) 5 180 65
Additional material 2 100 72
handlers
production and financial data provided by the company
cannot be disclosed, we consider a scenario were these
estimates are already available through some preliminary
analysis.
The above represents a multi-criteria decision-making
problem consisting of both quantitative and qualitative
criteria that also requires a method to quantify safety and
reliability to include it directly in the decision-making
process. Figure 2 illustrates the hierarchy for selection of the
most appropriate material handling equipment using the five
criteria and six alternatives specified by the company. The
company consulted a research team from a local university
(our team) to help with decision-making on the most
appropriate solution. Due to the high priority given to safety
and reliability, and the lack of an approach that explicitly
evaluates and incorporates these considerations into the
decision-making process for selection of material handling
technology, the following methodology is proposed.
4 The proposed methodology
and its implementation
Figure 3 summarizes the proposed framework integrating
a modified AHP with FMEA. The following subsections
describe the different components of the methodology and
its implementation in an Excel-based tool to solve the
above material handling selection problem. For the sake of
conciseness, an extensive explanation of FMEA and AHP
is avoided. For a detailed description on the theory and
justification for these tools, see [18] and [26].
4.1 Modified AHP: Differentiating between
qualitative and quantitative criteria
The modified AHP specifically distinguishes between
qualitative and quantitative criteria. A standard 1–9 scale
proposed by Saaty [26] is used by the experts for pairwise
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
Fig. 2 The AHP for the material
handling equipment selection
problem
Safety
Additional
material handlers
comparisons involving qualitative criteria. For quantitative
criteria, however, measured or estimated performance is
used for comparisons. This approach is justified because
of the following problems that may arise from using the
commonly used standard scale for quantitative criteria [27]:
– The standard integer scale can be easily misused. For
example, the value 3 that indicates a weak preference
essentially assigns three times more weight to the
slightly preferred component.
– Valid quantitative performance data will be ignored.
Suppose alternative A costs 1.1 times more than B. It is
not clear what judgment value in the standard scale can
best represent this difference since 1 represents equiva-
lence and 3 essentially indicates three times difference.
Therefore, there is a need to use the available mea-
sured/estimated data directly in the decision-making
process.
– The experts may have different preferences that may
compromise their true judgment. In the case presented
here, some of the stakeholders were completely for and
some were completely against a robotic solution. These
differences can easily lead to bias in the final recom-
mendation if stakeholders’ judgment matrices are used
for comparing alternatives with respect to quantitative
measures.
Fig. 3 The proposed methodology
Goal: Selecting the most appropriate
material handling system
Control Surplus capacity Congestion Payback period
AGV 1 AGV 2 AGV 3 AIV 1 AIV 2
(Vendor 1) (Vendor 2) (Vendor 3) (Vendor 4) (Vendor 5)
The modified AHP presented here alleviates these issues
(at least partially). In this modified AHP, the pairwise
comparison matrix A is still defined as in the original AHP
so that A = (aij ) is an n × n matrix with positive entries
that satisfy the reciprocal property aij = 1/aj i , ∀i, j ∈
,  = {1, 2, ..., n}. For qualitative measures, aij values
are based on the experts’ judgments using the standard
scale. However, when comparing quantitative criteria for
two elements i and j with measured/estimated performance
values wi and wj , the preference of element A to B will be
aij = wi /wj . Therefore, for a quantitative criterion where
a larger performance value is preferable (e.g., profit), the
pairwise comparison matrix of the n alternatives is given by
⎡ ⎤
w1 /w1 w1 /w2 ... w1 /wn
⎢ w2 /w1 w2 /w2 ... w2 /wn ⎥
⎢ ⎥.
⎣ ... ⎦
wn /w1 wn /w2 ... wn /wn
The pairwise comparison of two alternatives i and
j with respect to a negative criterion such as cost or
congestion, where a smaller performance value is desirable,
is given by aij = wj /wi , where wi and wj represent
the measured/estimated performance for alternatives i and
j , respectively. The pairwise comparison matrix for n
alternatives with respect to a negative criterion is formed by
the inverse of the ratios as follows
⎡ ⎤
w1 /w1 w2 /w1 ... wn /w1
⎢ w1 /w2 w2 /w2 ... wn /w2 ⎥
⎢ ⎥.
⎣ ... ⎦
w1 /wn w2 /wn ... wn /wn
Therefore, pairwise comparisons in this modified AHP
can be summarized as follows:
– For qualitative criteria, use experts’ judgment and the
standard 1–9 scale for the pairwise comparison of
alternatives.
– For a quantitative criterion where a larger performance
value is preferable, use the ratios of estimated/measured
performance to form the pairwise comparison matrix.
– For a quantitative criterion where a smaller perfor-
mance value is desirable, use the inverse ratios of
estimated/measured performance to form the pairwise
comparison matrix.
 Int J Adv Manuf Technol

Fig. 4 Specifying the criteria and alternatives in the Excel-based tool. Safety or FMEA is a required name in order for the FMEA results to be
automatically included in the AHP analysis

4.2 FMEA: Quantifying safety and reliability the results of the FMEA in quantitative terms. For any
alternative α, we have
In order to evaluate and incorporate safety and reliability 
Mα
in the decision-making process, we use the total risk TRPNα = α
Sm × Om
α
× Dm
α
, (1)
priority number (TRPN) metric proposed in [28] to express m=1

Fig. 5 Pairwise comparison of criteria and alternatives in the Excel- respectively. For more information on the description and justifica-
based tool. The modified AHP differentiates between quantita- tion of the 1–9 scale used for subjective pairwise comparisons in AHP,
tive and qualitative criteria indicated by gray and orange cells, see [26, 29]
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
where Mα represents the number of failure modes identified
for alternative α, and for any failure mode m, Sm α denotes
the severity, Omα is the probability/frequency of occurrence,
α
and Dm is the probability of detection. The TRPN index
is then treated as a quantitative measure in the modified
AHP to compare the alternatives in terms of safety and
reliability. Since a smaller TRPN is desirable, the inverse
ratio of TRPN values will be used to form the corresponding
pairwise comparison matrix.
4.3 Implementation and results
The goal of this section is twofold: (1) present the applica-
tion of the proposed methodology in the material handling
system selection problem discussed in Section 3 and (2)
provide a tutorial for an Excel-based tool that implements
the proposed framework. The tool is made available online
Fig. 6 A sample FMEA analysis for AGV 1 supplied by vendor 1.
The columns for potential effect(s), cause(s), process control, recom-
mended action, and other standard fields in an FMEA form are not
shown for enhanced representation (note that these hidden columns
for free via the tool’s webpage. We hope that this not only
enables replicability of the results presented in this paper,
but also allows researchers and practitioners to use the
proposed methodology in any other multi-criteria decision-
making problem that requires FMEA and AHP integration.
It is worth noting that a different version of this tool is
currently used by the company studied in this work at its
various facilities around the world.
The first step in using the Excel-based tool is to set up
the workbook by specifying the criteria and alternatives for
the decision-making problem at hand as shown in Fig. 4.
When defining the criteria, the user needs to specify their
type (qualitative or quantitative). Also, the name Safety or
FMEA is required in order for the FMEA analysis to be
automatically included in the AHP. Once the criteria and
alternatives are defined, the user needs to press the Set
up Workbook button to create a worksheet called Input
only include additional verbal descriptions and do not affect the TRPN
calculation). The list of failure modes are based on AGV FMEA anal-
ysis in the literature [30] with a few additional modes defined by the
company

Table 2 Total risk priority number (TRPN) for the alternatives
determined by their respective FMEA results
Alternative Total risk priority
number (TRPN)
AGV 1 (vendor 1) 2014
AGV 2 (vendor 2) 2516
AGV 3 (vendor 3) 3160
AIV 1 (vendor 4) 4182
AIV 2 (vendor 5) 3772
Additional material handlers 1748
containing blank pairwise comparison matrices required for
the AHP analysis as well as worksheets containing blank
FMEA forms for each alternative.
The next step is to complete the pairwise comparison
matrices in the newly created Input worksheet. In this
worksheet, the orange cells indicate pairwise comparison
for qualitative measures, which will be based on experts’
judgment. The orange cells in Fig. 5 indicate that, for this
case study, the pairwise comparison of criteria (shown on
the left) and the pairwise comparison of alternatives with
respect to criterion Control (shown in the table on the right)
are based on experts’ judgments. The research team worked
with a panel consisting of top executives (including the
Director of Operational Excellence), shop floor managers
(including production and quality managers), and process
Fig. 7 A screenshot of the AHP tab crated by the decision support tool
containing the final results. The AHP tab also contains a chart of the
AHP hierarchy (similar to Figure 2) and details of all other pairwise
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
engineers to determine these subjective pairwise compar-
isons. Looking at the pairwise comparison of alternatives
with respect to Control, we observe that the panel were
especially skeptical about the level of control over the oper-
ation of AIV systems. The panelists’ judgment suggests
that human material handlers provide maximum control,
followed by AGV 1 that involves taped/wired paths,
then AGV 2 and 3 that involve wireless directed paths.
Pairwise comparison of alternatives with respect to quan-
titative criteria, however, are indicated by gray cells and
determined as described in Section 4.1 according to the
measured/estimated performance of the alternatives as pro-
vided in Table 1. For instance, the pairwise comparison
of “AGV 1 vs AGV 2” with respect to Payback Period is
computed as the inverse of the ratio of their estimated pay-
back periods given by ( 52 −1 = 0.83. Note that the inverse
43 )
ratio is used for quantitative measures where a smaller
value is preferable (that is, for payback period, congestion,
and FMEA’s total risk priority number referred to as Safety
index in this example), while the actual ratio is used for
quantitative measures where a larger value is desirable as for
Surplus Capacity in this case. Therefore, using the estimates
in Table 1, the pairwise comparison of “AGV 1 vs AGV 2”
270 ) = 1.70 as shown
with respect to Surplus Capacity is ( 460
in Fig. 5.
As described in Section 4.2, safety is quantified based
on the total risk priority number (TRPN) obtained from the
FMEA analysis and calculated by Eq. 1. In other words,
comparison matrices and their consistency ratio (the figure only shows
the details related to weighting of criteria)
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
each pairwise comparison of alternatives with respect to
safety, shown in the table on the right in Fig. 5, is the
inverse ratio of the TRPN for the two alternatives being
compared. The research team worked with the same panel of
representatives from the company to perform a comprehen-
sive FMEA analysis considering both design and process
failure modes for a material handler operator, AGVs, and
AIVs. In the Excel-based tool, the FMEA results are speci-
fied in separate FMEA tabs (one worksheet per alternative),
which are then used by the tool to compute the TRPN values
for the alternatives and automatically complete the corre-
sponding pairwise comparisons in the Input tab under the
Safety column. Figure 6 presents a sample FMEA for AGV
1 by Vendor 1 and Table 2 summarizes the total risk prior-
ity number for all alternatives. Since a smaller total TRPN
is desirable, the pairwise comparisons are obtained by the
inverse of the TRPN ratios. For example, the pairwise com-
parison for “AGV 1 vs AGV 2” with respect to Safety is
given by ( 2014 −1 = 1.25 as shown in Fig. 5.
2516 )
Once all pairwise comparisons are specified, the user
needs to click on the Calculate Results button (see Fig. 5)
and the tool generates a new tab called AHP containing the
final scores and ranks for the alternatives as well as the
details of the AHP analysis including the consistency ratio
(CR) for each pairwise comparison matrix (a CR ≤ 0.1
is generally considered acceptable in the AHP literature).
Therefore, the newly created AHP worksheet contains
all information necessary for decision-making. Figure 7
summarizes the final results reported by the decision
support tool. As suggested by the table on top, the modified
AHP recommends hiring additional material handlers as the
solution with the highest overall score followed by AGV 1
and AGV 2. This is primarily due to the fact that a human
operator is determined to result in higher safety and control
while minimizing congestion as it requires the smallest
number of material handler equipment (2 compared to 3–5
for other alternatives as shown in Table 1). This is mainly
because the powered jack trucks used by operators are
larger than the candidate AGV and AIV devices considered
in the study. Therefore, fewer jack trucks are needed to
keep up with the production rate, reducing congestion in
the facility. Similar results were obtained for the actual
project.
5 Summary and conclusions
Motivated by a real-world material handling system
selection problem, this paper proposes a novel and
integrated methodology to explicitly incorporate safety and
reliability considerations into the decision-making process
while distinguishing between qualitative and quantitative
criteria. More specifically, FMEA is used to assess safety
and reliability and obtain a total risk priority number
(TRPN) as a global measure of risk. Once the risk associated
with each alternative is quantified using TRPN, the results
are fed into a modified AHP that differentiates between
quantitative and qualitative criteria. This allows for direct
use of available data on measured/estimated performance
of alternatives with respect to the quantitative criteria in
the decision-making process. It also prevents misuse and
inaccuracies that would be introduced if experts’ judgments
were used instead of actual data. This is especially
important since the experts may have different preferences
that may result in a bias toward certain alternatives. For
qualitative criteria, however, using experts’ judgments is
inevitable due to the lack of data. An Excel-based tool
that implements the proposed framework is developed and
made available online via the tool’s webpage. A real-world
material handling equipment selection problem is used to
illustrate the applicability of the proposed methodology and
accompanying tool. There are a few important things to
note:
– While we use TRPN as a measure of overall safety
and reliability risks [28], many other possibilities exist
for quantifying FMEA results. For example, one could
use the maximum RPN value. Note that each of these
metrics has its advantages and disadvantages. The
maximum RPN can be an effective measure when there
is a significant difference between the RPN values
for the identified failure modes or when one of the
alternatives has a failure mode with an extremely high
RPN. In such cases, using the average (or sum) of RPN
values could result in a biased metric that ignores such
extreme failure modes. Future research could focus on
determining the most appropriate metric under various
scenarios. The proposed tool can then be extended so
that the user specifies what metric to use (average, sum,
maximum, median, etc.).
– We chose AHP for the initial implementation of the
methodology mainly because it is the most commonly
used tool in this context. However, any other MCDM
tool (e.g., data envelopment analysis [31]) could be
used.
– Here, the original FMEA was adopted since many prac-
titioners and companies use this method and are famil-
iar with it. However, any other failure/safety assessment
tool or variants of FMEA could be used. Future exten-
sions can investigate the efficacy of these alternative
approaches. The tool can also be extended to support
these different methods.
– A limitation of the proposed methodology is that it does
not account for uncertainties in the measured/estimated
performance and/or experts’ judgments. This can be
addressed by replacing the traditional AHP with the

enhanced Monte Carlo AHP approach proposed in [32]
to support uncertainties in pairwise comparison matri-
ces in an individual or group decision-making setting
while still maintaining consistency requirements.
– The proposed methodology and tool are valid and appli-
cable in any decision-making problem where FMEA
is determined to be an important factor to be directly
included in the decision-making process along with
other quantitative and qualitative measures, regardless
of what specific alternatives are under consideration.
Therefore, there are many possible applications beyond
material handling system selection. The Excel-based
tool also significantly facilitates sensitivity analysis to
assess the effect of inclusion/exclusion of certain crite-
ria and/or changing the pairwise comparison matrices.
All the user needs to do is set up the workbook using
the new set of inputs and rerun the calculations.
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
References
1. Esmaeilian B, Behdad S, Wang B (2016) The evolution and future
of manufacturing: a review. J Manuf Syst 39:79–100
2. Negahban A, Smith JS (2014) Simulation for manufacturing
system design and operation: literature review and analysis. J
Manuf Syst 33(2):241–261
3. Roodbergen KJ, Vis IFA (2009) A survey of literature on
automated storage and retrieval systems. Eur J Oper Res
194(2):343–362
4. Burt CN, Caccetta L (2014) Equipment selection for surface
mining: a review. Interfaces 44(2):143–162
5. Lau HYK, Zhao Y (2008) Integrated scheduling of handling
equipment at automated container terminals. Int J Prod Econ
112(2):665–682
6. Onut S, Kara SS, Mert S (2009) Selecting the suitable material
handling equipment in the presence of vagueness. Int J Adv Manuf
Technol 44(7):818–828
7. Zaghdoud R, Collart-Dutilleul S, Ghedira K, Mesghouni K, Zidi
K (2013) A multi-objective approach for assignment containers
to AIVs in a container terminal. In: Proceedings of the IEEE
International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, pp
2460–2466
8. Mhalla A, Collart-Dutilleul S, Zhang H (2016) Robust control
under uncertainty for seaport handling equipments. Transportation
Research Procedia 14:203–212
9. Mhalla A, Benrejeb M, Zhang H (2016) Maintenance processes
for container handling equipment using P-time petri nets. J Eng
Res 4(4):99–112
10. Vis IFA (2006) Survey of research in the design and control of
automated guided vehicle systems. Eur J Oper Res 170(3):677–
709
11. Ozkok M (2013) Risk assessment in ship hull structure production
using FMEA. J Mar Sci Technol 22(2):173–185
12. Ocampo JR, Hernandez-Matias JC, Vizan A (2017) A method
for estimating the influence of advanced manufacturing tools on
the manufacturing competitiveness of Maquiladoras in the apparel
industry in Central America. Comput Ind 87:31–51
Int J Adv Manuf Technol
13. Mejjaouli S, Babiceanu RF (2014) Holonic condition monitoring
and fault-recovery system for sustainable manufacturing enter-
prises. In: Borangiu T, Trentesaux D, Thomas A (eds) Service ori-
entation in Holonic and Multi-Agent Manufacturing and Robotics.
Springer International Publishing, pp 31–46
14. Kuo C-H, Huang H-P (2000) Failure modeling and process
monitoring for flexible manufacturing systems using colored
timed Petri nets. IEEE Trans Robot Autom 16(3):301–312
15. Shah LA, Etienne A, Siadat A, Vernadat F (2016) Decision-
making in the manufacturing environment using a value-risk
graph. J Intell Manuf 27(3):617–630
16. Chemweno P, Pintelon L, Van Horenbeek A, Muchiri P (2015)
Development of a risk assessment selection methodology for asset
maintenance decision making An analytic network process (ANP)
approach. Int J Prod Econ 170:663–676
17. Almannai B, Greenough R, Kay J (2008) A decision support tool
based on QFD and FMEA for the selection of manufacturing
automation technologies. Robot Comput Integr Manuf 24(4):501–
507
18. Stamatis DH (2003) Failure mode and effect analysis: FMEA from
theory to execution, 2nd edn. ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee
19. Sikich J (1998) Development and implementation of an auto-
mated wafer transport system. In: Proceedings of the IEEE/SEMI
Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference and Work-
shop, pp 400–404
20. Shoults LW (2016) Implementation of design failure modes and
effects analysis for hybrid vehicle systems. MS thesis, Virginia
Polytechnic Institute and State University
21. Chakraborty S, Banik D (2006) Design of a material handling
equipment selection model using analytic hierarchy process. Int J
Adv Manuf Technol 28(11):1237–1245
22. Aktan HE, Tosun O (2013) An integrated fuzzy AHP – fuzzy
TOPSIS approach for AS/RS selection. Int J Prod Qual Manag
11(2):228–245
23. Chan FTS, Ip RWL, Lau H (2001) Integration of expert system
with analytic hierarchy process for the design of material handling
equipment selection system. J Mater Process Technol 116(2):137–
145
24. Chan FTS (2002) Design of material handling equipment selection
system: an integration of expert system with analytic hierarchy
process approach. Integr Manuf Syst 13(1):58–68
25. Braglia M, Gabbrielli R, Miconi D (2001) Material handling
device selection in cellular manufacturing. J Multi-Criteria Decis
Anal 10(6):303–315
26. Saaty TL (1980) The analytic hierarchy process. McGraw-Hill,
New York
27. Weber SF (1993) A modified analytic hierarchy process for
automated manufacturing decisions. Interfaces 23(4):75–84
28. Silvestri A, DeFelice F, Petrillo A (2012) Multi-criteria risk
analysis to improve safety in manufacturing systems. Int J Prod
Res 50(17):4806–4821
29. Meesariganda BR, Ishizaka A (2017) Mapping verbal AHP scale
to numerical scale for cloud computing strategy selection. Appl
Soft Comput 53:111–118
30. Yan R, Dunnett SJ, Jackson LM (2016) Reliability modelling of
automated guided vehicles by fault tree analysis. In: Proceedings
of the 5th Conference on Operational Research, pp 3–10
31. Azadeh A, Moghaddam M, Asadzadeh SM, Negahban A (2011)
An integrated fuzzy simulation-fuzzy data envelopment analysis
algorithm for job-shop layout optimization: the case of injec-
tion process with ambiguous data. Eur J Oper Res 214(3):768–
779
32. Negahban A (2018) Optimizing consistency improvement of
positive reciprocal matrices with implications for monte carlo
analytic hierarchy process. Comput Ind Eng 124:113–124