A Fuzzy FMEA-Resilience Approach for Maintenance Planning in a Plastics Industry

The productivity and efficiency of industrial systems are highly affected by failures and machine breakdowns. Further, in asset-intensive industries, unexpected failures are considered the primary source of operational risk. In response, the maintenance department strives to calculate reliable estimates of the risk levels associated with such failures and develop resilient maintenance strategies that enable it to respond effectively to equipment failures. The research developed a framework for integrating fuzzy failure mode and effects analysis (FFMEA) with resilience engineering (RE) concepts for maintenance planning. The framework consists of four main stages: FFMEA, Risk isosurface (RI), resilience assessment, and maintenance planning. In FFMEA, multiple sub-factors were considered for each main risk factor and evaluated using fuzzy logic. Then, in the RI stage, the risk priority number (RPN) was calculated through a fuzzy approach that considered the order of the importance of the main three risk factors. The fuzzy resilience assessment was applied through a survey of fiftyone questions related to the main four RE potentials to determine the need for resilient maintenance strategies. Finally, the RPN-Resilience diagram was employed to classify maintenance activities into six main maintenance strategies. A case study from a production line of plastic bags was used for illustration. The main advantage of the proposed FFMEA is that it divides the main risk criteria into subcriteria to increase the accuracy of risk assessment and evaluate resilience potentials under fuzziness. In conclusion, the integration of the risk-resilience evaluation is a valuable tool for effectively planning maintenance activities.