An integrated decision-making model for multi-attributes decision-making (MADM) problems in additive manufacturing process planning

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated decision-making model for multi-attributes decision-making (MADM) problems in additive manufacturing (AM) process planning and for related MADM problems in other research areas.

This research analyzed the drawbacks of former methods and then proposed two sub-decision-making models, “deviation model” and “similarity model”. The former sub-model aimed to measure the deviation extent of each alternative to the aspired goal based on analyzing Euclidean distance between them, whereas the latter sub-model applying grey incidence analysis was used to measure the similarity between alternatives and the expected goal by investigating the curve shape of each alternative. Afterwards, an integrated model based on the aggregation of the two sub-models was proposed and verified by a numerical example and simple case studies.

The calculating results of the cited numerical example and the comparison to former related research showed that this proposed model is more practical and reasonable than former methods applied in MADM problems of AM. In addition, the proposed model can be applied in other fields where MADM problems exist.

This proposed integrated model not only considered the deviation extent of alternatives to the aspired goal but also investigated the similarity between alternatives and the expected goal. The similarity analysis compensates the drawbacks of traditional “distance-based” models or methods that cannot distinguish alternatives which have the same distance-based index value.