74 Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Multi-criteria inventory classification through integration of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and artificial neural network Golam Kabir* and M. Ahsan Akhtar Hasin Department of Industrial and Production Engineering (IPE), Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka 1000, Bangladesh E-mail: gk.raju@yahoo.com E-mail: aahasin@ipe.buet.ac.bd *Corresponding author Abstract: A systematic approach to the inventory control and classification may have a significant influence on company competitiveness. In practice, all inventories cannot be controlled with equal attention. To efficiently control the inventory items and to determine the suitable ordering policies for them, multi- criteria inventory classification is used. The objective of this research is to develop a multi-criteria inventory classification model through integration of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and artificial neural network approach. FAHP is used to determine the relative weights of the attributes or criteria using Chang’s extent analysis and to classify inventories into different categories. Various structures of multi-layer feed-forward back-propagation neural networks have been analysed and the optimal one with the minimum mean absolute percentage of error between the measured and the predicted values have been selected. To accredit the proposed model, it is implemented for 351 raw materials of switchgear section of Energypac Engineering Limited, a large power engineering company of Bangladesh. Keywords: ANN; artificial neural network; FAHP; fuzzy analytic hierarchy process; multi-criteria inventory classification. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kabir, G. and Hasin, M.A.A. (2013) ‘Multi-criteria inventory classification through integration of fuzzy analytic hierarchy process and artificial neural network’, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp.74–103. Biographical notes: Golam Kabir is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial and Production Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He received a BSc and an MSc in Industrial and Production Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) in 2009 and 2011, respectively. His research interest includes multi-criteria decision analysis under risk and uncertainty, fuzzy inference system, mathematical modelling and production optimisation. M. Ahsan Akhtar Hasin received a BSc in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BUET, Dhaka, Bangladesh, an MSc in Engineering and a PhD from Industrial Systems Engineering, AIT, Bangkok, Thailand. He has