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Risk evaluation in failure mode and effects analysis using fuzzy digraph and matrix approach

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Abstract

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) is a widely used engineering technique for identifying and eliminating known and potential failures from systems, designs, products, processes or services. However, the conventional risk priority number method has been extensively criticized in the literature for a lot of reasons such as ignoring relative importance of risk factors, questionable multiplication procedure, and imprecisely evaluation. In this article, a new FMEA model based on fuzzy digraph and matrix approach is developed to solve the problems and improve the effectiveness of the traditional FMEA. All the information about risk factors like occurrence (O), severity (S) and detection (D) and their relative weights are expressed in linguistic terms, represented by fuzzy numbers. By considering the risk factors and their relative importance, a risk factors fuzzy digraph is developed for the optimum representation of interrelations. Then, corresponding fuzzy risk matrixes are formed for all the identified failure modes in FMEA and risk priority indexes are computed for determining the risk priorities of the failure modes. Finally, a case study of steam valve system is included to illustrate the proposed fuzzy FMEA and the advantages are highlighted by comparing with the listed methods.

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Acknowledgments

The authors express sincere appreciation to the editor and reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which are very helpful in improving the quality of the paper. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. NSFC 71272177/G020902) and the funds of the Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (No. 12ZS101).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, People’s Republic of China

    Hu-Chen Liu, Yi-Zeng Chen & Jian-Xin You

  2. School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    Hu-Chen Liu, Jian-Xin You & Hui Li

  3. School of Medicine, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    Hui Li

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  1. Hu-Chen Liu
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Correspondence to Hui Li.

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Liu, HC., Chen, YZ., You, JX. et al. Risk evaluation in failure mode and effects analysis using fuzzy digraph and matrix approach. J Intell Manuf 27, 805–816 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-014-0915-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10845-014-0915-6

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