Application of the analytical hierarchy process for real-time scheduling and part routing in advanced manufacturing systems

This paper presents a framework that employs the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) in advanced manufacturing systems for real-time scheduling and part routing. The proposed multicriteria decision-making framework brings a new perspective to real-time scheduling and part routing decisions, by implementing pairwise comparison of possible future states of a manufacturing system. The framework includes an extended finite state machine and a scheduler model to facilitate dynamic, short-term decision making. The scheduler model, which is developed on the basis of control theory, uses AHP to assess possible future states in a limited look-ahead horizon by comparing the performance measures of each state. The multicriteria decision-making framework developed in this study is implemented in a simulation environment to validate it for real-time manufacturing system control and investigate its performance under a range of look-ahead horizons. Simulation results indicate that the proposed framework performs better for a mid-range horizon for most of the commonly used performance measures.