Machine Tool Selection Based on AHP and ACO

Aiming at uncertainty of process plans in the process decision making, the paper introduced a method based on ant colony optimization (ACO) to find out the set of optimal solutions for multi-objective machine tool selection. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to simplify process decision making plans, and the structural diagram of AHP was made up according to the different demands of manufacturing engineer. By means of the examples the different elements to different manufacturing processes are comprehensive evaluated, and the most splendid process scheme is evaluated, meanwhile the feasibility of the proposed method applying process decision making is verified.