Decision making model for material selection using a hybrid MCDM technique

In today's market place, the selection of material for a particular application is a challenging task, as the selected material directly determines the visible quality and the cost of the product. The large number of available materials, together with the complex relationships between various selection parameters, often makes the selection process a difficult task. For these reasons, MCDM has been found to be a useful approach to solve this kind of problem. In this work, a user friendly two-stage decision support hybrid MCDM model is developed. The first stage is to prioritise the different criteria using and the second stage is to select the material using TOPSIS. An example is solved to illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the suggested model to the material selection for an impellor and AISI 4340 was found to be the best material alternative based on the given priorities of the criteria. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.