Method of productivity improvement through integration of analytical hierarchy process into theory of inventive problem solving

Abstract

Human productivity in manufacturing and industrial organizations has been a challenge since ages. Making effective decisions for the improvement of productivity needs generation of efficient methods and decision making starts with this fact that always there are many criterions to be considered simultaneously. Current business environments due to rapid development, are asking industrial companies to make the multi criteria effective decisions. In this thesis, during decision making regarding human productivity, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) areapplied to propose suitable productivity improvement methods with respect to cost, production and time simultaneously. The method isinvestigated on a real-world example which isa manufacturing company. At first, TRIZ concept isused to match human resource into the procedure extracted from many solved problems to omit the errors of the decision-making. Then, the criterions areconsidered and the problem is structured into hierarchies to make the final decision. To this end, the ideas of a group of experts areaggregated and the decision selection is made using AHP. The robustness and stability of the method areexamined by conducting sensitivity analysis. The results of analysis show that the constructed methods are reliable and the ranking of AHP can be used for the purpose of productivity improvement.