This study aims to report the progress and latest status of the “selection of welding process” problem in terms of research, developments, and applications. In addition, it introduces guidelines to serve constructing future expert systems for the problem. Therefore, it presents an extensive literature review on the approaches used to model and solve the problem over 36 years. Hence, several findings and proposed insights are reported. The paper recommends some existing approaches based on their performance in general and literature reporting in addition to simple statistics. A structure for prospected expert systems is proposed. The paper collected and rearranged decision criteria/sub-criteria of the problem, in a manageable form, to construct a modifiable hierarchical scheme. Additional criteria were merged based on recent trends in manufacturing system evaluation such as sustainability and performability. Finally, an agenda is introduced to recognize research opportunities in this area based on prospected industrial and business revolutions.
This paper develops a framework to differentiate welding processes, for industrial purposes, according to two families of criteria. It is constructed as a phase-wise decision support system that reviews objects with physical and economic criteria. The first phase excludes the non-functioning processes from the panel, and catching the best candidate processes are left to the second phase. The second phase is an integrated mechanism that weights the active criteria versus the goal using a FUZZY-AHP system and then it ranks the candidates using a FUZZY-TOPSIS system. Both phases operate linked with parallel and accessible database and knowledge-base to accommodate a large variety of welding factors (alternative welding processes and welding criteria) and allow inserting new ones. This framework is mechanized as a portable software, and then validated based on existing cases. The proposed framework is advantageous with having a flexible opened structure that can manage existing and expected industrial problems.
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