AIDA and group technology

The paper describes part of ft study made by the author at the Turin International Centre, in which the operations research technique of AIDA was used to plan the major policy decisions for a new production system. AIDA or ‘ Analysis of Interconnected Decision Areas ’ is a technique developed by the Institute for Operational Research in Britain. It is used to find optimum solutions for problems involving many different decision areas and inter related options. It uses network analysis to eliminate illogical solutions and carefully specified criteria to choose between the remaining possible solutions. The aim of the study was to compare the solution found using AIDA with the solution based on group technology. AIDA found exactly the same solution as that advocated by the author and by some other advocates of group technology.