Investment Decisions in Advanced Manufacturing Technology : A Fuzzy Set Theory Approach

The early chapters of this book review the existing AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Technologies) decision-making literature.

This section of the book concludes that AMT decisions can be handicapped by over-emphasis on short-term financial calculation.

A number of theoretical models have been suggested which combine both financial and strategic analysis.

These are reviewed, and it is concluded that these models are not grounded in practice and often provide unconvincing and inconsistent guidance for practitioners.

An empirical survey is reported which identifies "best practice" in ATM decision-making.

The questionnaire survey is supported by a series of field case studies.

In the final chapter the mathematical models reported earlier are grounded in the empirical data and extended by the case of fuzzy set theory to deal with imprecise, estimated data.