Utilization of Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and TOPSIS-AHP for selecting the best plant maintenance strategy

Abstract

Determination of a plant maintenance strategy in a manufacturing plant is a crucial process. The appropriateness of the adopted maintenance strategy will directly and indirectly affect the plant manufacturing cost. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) offers as an alternative instrument to cater the decision-making problem. However, in a higher critical condition, AHP analysis as only one method is insufficient for a concrete decision making. This paper explores and extends the methodology and results of a research study which utilizes Fuzzy-AHP and TOPSIS-AHP. The objective of this research is to select the best maintenance management method between corrective maintenance (CM), predictive maintenance (PDM) and condition-based maintenance (CBM) via methodologies. Fuzzy-AHP is one popular decision-making instrument which has the ability to capture the uncertainty in judgement. TOPSIS-AHP is another simple and powerful alternative instrument to solve multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. It is concluded that condition-based maintenance (CBM) strategy is the best plant maintenance strategy using all the MCDM methods. For future study, other MCDM instrument such as Preference Ranking Organization Method (PROMETHEE) can be explored, and compared.