Multi-attribute approaches for maintenance policies selection problem

The selection of the most appropriate maintenance strategy is a very complex task, requiring the careful analysis and evaluation of several attributes that are often conflicting. According to Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) approach, this paper describes the comparative study of the application of three Multi Attribute Decision Making methods to solve the maintenance policies selection problem. In particular, the approaches based on crisp and fuzzy logic extension of Grey Theory, Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and the compromise ranking method (VIKOR) are presented.The analysed methodologies have been tested on an industrial case study dealing with an important Italian oil refinery. Finally, in order to assess methods and results robustness, a sensitivity analysis is also proposed, so that to evaluate the variation of the results as a function of input data change, i.e. by varying the relative weight or importance judgments assigned to every used criterion