The new concept of manufacturing “DNA” within an analytic hierarchy process‐driven expert system

Ever since the bronze age, graphical representations have been employed to convey a message or a phenomenon. Graphical representations have been and continue to be a powerful tool to record events and changes throughout history. It is often helpful to use conceptual models to visualise problems, and in order to find possible solutions. Manufacturing planning and control (MPC) as a discipline is no exception to this rule. Many useful methods/models in this field including Gantt charts, CPM, PERT, and fishbone diagrams have been employed. However, representing complex multi‐variate problems through ordinary conceptual models can be quite arduous and the results may not be objectively accurate. This paper illustrates how a chain of “state‐space” models can be formed, based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), which can pertain to existing complex practical manufacturing circumstances in an objective manner.