<p>In metal machining operations, selection of an appropriate cutting tool material plays an important role in maintaining the desired accuracy and surface quality of the machined components. But, due to excessive tool wear and frequent tool replacement, conventional cutting tools are being replaced by uncoated and coated cutting tool inserts leading to enhanced machining efficiency and flexibility with reduced cost. Considering availability of several alternative cutting tool insert materials to be evaluated based on a set of conflicting criteria, it can be treated as a typical multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. This paper presents a novel approach integrating logarithmic percentage change-driven objective weighting (LOPCOW) and alternative ranking order method accounting for two-step normalization (AROMAN) for solving a material selection problem for uncoated cutting tool insert. This unified approach identifies cermets as the most suitable cutting tool insert material, followed by ceramic. On the other hand, carbide is the worst chosen material. A comparative study with other state-of-the-art MCDM methods proves its consistency in deriving the accurate ranking patterns. It also shows high level of stability against changing values of different tuning parameters and criteria weights. Being an accurate, consistent and robust approach, it can thus be effectively applied to solve material selection problem for any of the engineering components.</p>