Manufacturing Technology Today

Shankar Chakraborty , Debabrata Banik ¹

Affiliations
1 Dept. of Production Engg., Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700032, IN

Abstract

This paper attempts to describe the key features o f inventory control system and report a study that utilizes the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique to evaluate the best policy o f inventory control. The study reviews the most important criteria and sub-criteria affecting the selection of the optimal inventory control policy and determines their respective priority values imposing the AHP methodology. Five most popularly used inventory control policies are considered based on knowledge and experience and then subsequently ranked using the AHP under a multi-criteria environment. These considerations together with pair-wise comparison matrices and evaluating methodology lead to prioritize the conflicting criteria for selecting the optimal policy. Sensitivity analysis is also performed to search out the most critical and robust criteria in the inventory control policy selection problem.

Full Text

     

Shankar Chakraborty ¹, Debabrata Banik ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Production Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-700 032, IN

Abstract

In any manufacturing organization, the traditional ABC analysis for selective inventory control represents the relationship between the volume and annual consumption value of the inventory items. The procedure of classifying inventory items into ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ categories needs to be constantly and carefully attentive to how well it will interpret the relevant data with multiple criteria and conflicting objectives. Perhaps the most creative and difficult task in making a decision is to choose the dominant criteria along with the other related sub-criteria and search out the fact that how those are important deciding factors in selecting the ‘A’, ‘B ’ and ‘C’ class of items. This paper highlights a distinct methodology to analyze the ‘A' ‘B' and ‘C ’ items using the pair-wise comparison matrices of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique, which ensures the consistency of the decision maker’s judgments regarding the importance of one criteria over another to find out the weightage value for each of the considered criteria and sub-criteria. The developed approach is illustrated using real time data and validated with the theoretical results.

Full Text