Applying decision methods to select rapid prototyping technologies

Purpose – The use of rapid prototyping (RP) technologies is becoming increasingly popular due to the reduction of machinery prices. Consequently, more and more industries now have the opportunity to apply such processes to improve their product development cycles. The purpose of this paper is to present different decision‐making approaches to choose an adequate RP process.Design/methodology/approach – Here, four decision approaches are applied to compare six processes regarding six criteria, using the input data from previous works. As a result, six decision methods are compared. Two different scenarios are constructed, where different important attributes are considered, simulating two different prototype applications.Findings – It is demonstrated that not all methods result in the same RP ranking, however, most of them provide the same first option for a given scenario. The characteristics of the methods could be related to their influence on the evaluation, which serve as guidelines for the decision ma...