A Hybrid Multiple Criteria Decision Making Technique for Prioritizing Equipments

Prioritization of equipment is an important factor for decision making to optimize maintenance management in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM). Many factors must be considered as part of the prioritization of equipment for maintenance activities. Consequently, evaluation procedures involve several objectives and it is often necessary to compromise among conflicting tangible and intangible factors. Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a useful approach to solve these problems. In this study, a hybrid model is developed for prioritizing the equipment in hybrid flow systems. The first stage involves identifying the criteria. The second stage is prioritizing the different criteria using fuzzy Analytical Network Process (ANP), in which the weight of each criterion is calculated using modified fuzzy Logarithmic Least Square Method (LLSM) to overcome the criticism of inconsistency, unbalanced scale of judgments, uncertainty and imprecision in the pair-wise comparison process, then finally ranking of equipment using fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-1589-2.ch014