Analysis of the effect of the number of criteria and alternatives on the ranking results in applications of the multi criteria decision making approaches in machining center selection problems

Multi criteria machining center selection models are widely used in the literature. In the applications of multi-criteria decision making models, machining center selection criteria are directly taken from catalogues. It is known that to have a ranking model sensitive to the weights of the selection criteria, it is especially important to limit the number of selection criteria to 7 +/- 2. A similar proposal can be put forward for the number of machining centers. In this study, whether or not reducing the number of criteria and alternative machining centers make the ranking results more sensitive to the changes in the criteria weights is studied using Spearman's rank correlation test. The study results show that the ranking results become more sensitive with a reduced number of criteria and alternative machining centers.