Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Optimization Strategy for RP Material Selection: A Case Study

Introduction

In the advancement in manufacturing made the rapid prototyping (RP) process quite important and beneficial in the technical world. Basically, RP uses three-dimensional computer-aided design data (CAD) to replicate a prototype model of a planned designed part. Such a manufacturing process is carried by the successive layering of the prototype model using various kinds of materials. Due to the rapid growth of RP technology, the selection of the most appropriate material to meet the user requirements from among a number of RP materials has become increasingly important. Improper selection leads to failure of the RP product, dissatisfaction of customer, lower demands etc. Also, during the selection, designer should keep into account the influence of factors which affects the process of material selection for the RP process (Jaromin, 2013; Gibson et al. 2015; Gupta et al. 2017). Moreover, the selection of optimal RP material is very difficult because it depends on many attributes and constrains and also depends on different mechanical, physical and chemical properties. So RP material selection is a complex multi-attribute or criteria optimization problem that cannot be solved using conventional optimization techniques. Furthermore, RP material selection process includes contradictory criterias which made essential to implement the sophisticated MCDM methods (Chang, 2011; Lan, 2009). In which a decision maker has to choose the most optimal RP material from several sets of RP materials.