The employment of natural fibres in fused deposition modeling has raised much attention from researchers in finding a suitable formulation for the natural fibre composite filaments. Moreover, selection of suitable natural fibres for fused deposition modeling should be performed before the development of the composites. It could not be performed without identifying selection criteria that comprehend both materials and fused deposition modeling process requirements. Therefore, in this study, integration of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)/ Analytic Network Process (ANP) has been introduced in selecting the natural fibres based in different clusters of selection concurrently. The selection process has been performed based on the interdependency among the selection criteria. Pairwise comparison matrices are constructed based on AHP's hierarchical model and super matrices are constructed based on the ANP's network model. As a result, flax fibre has ranked at the top of the selection by scored 19.5% from the overall evaluation. Flax fibre has excellent material properties and been found in various natural fibre composite applications. Further investigation is needed to study the compatibility of this fibre to be reinforced with a thermoplastic polymer matrix to develop a resultant natural fibre composite filament for fused deposition modeling.

Material selection of natural fiber for composite based products is an essential process in product design development especially in application of automotive components. Several factors need to be considered concurrently and dependency among the factors should be evaluated during the judgement. Therefore, a proposed approach is presented in this study by using Analytic Hierarchy Process/Analytic Network Process (AHP/ANP) to prioritize the criteria for material selection of natural fiber composites automotive components. AHP computes the priority values from pairwise comparison basis and ANP derives the global priority values based on the inner dependency of the criteria. As in a case study, flax fibers obtained the highest value (19%) and rank as number one fibers in the selection where tensile strength is the most significant criteria. Thus, application of AHP/ANP would derive a more reliable and accurate judgement in material selection and their flexibility allows integration with other decision making tools.