Sustainable lathe machine selection using PROMETHEE

The manufacturing echelon of supply chains utilizes several machines to convert raw materials into finished products. Therefore, during procurement of these machines, supply chain managers are usually saddled with the problem of obtaining the best machine from a group of similar alternatives, considering multiple criteria simultaneously. The main purpose of this study is to utilize the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) for selecting the best lathe machine from a group of five (5) similar alternatives, namely Lathe 1, Lathe 2, Lathe 3, Lathe 4 and Lathe 5. Four (4) criteria were used in evaluating the machines, namely power, price, complexity, and weight, with preference weights of 0.25, 0.3, 0.25, and 0.2, respectively. The results indicated that Lathe 2 is the best alternative because it has the highest total net flows of 0.325, followed by Lathe 5, which has total net flows of 0.03. Next is Lathe 1, which has a total net flow of -0.0188, followed by Lathe 3, having a total net flow of -0.0975, and finally, Lathe 4, which is the worst ranking alternative, having a total net flow of -0.2388. Therefore, PROMETHEE proved to be a viable multi-criteria decision-making tool for selecting the most suitable lathe machine among the group of alternative machines. This study is significant because it provides a procedure for aiding supply chain managers in selecting the best alternative among a group of similar alternatives using PROMETHEE.