Selecting optimum maintenance strategy by fuzzy interactive linear assignment method

In the current competitive environment managers of manufacturing and service organizations try to make their organizations competitive by providing timely delivery of high quality products. Maintenance, as a system, plays a key role in reducing cost, minimizing equipment downtime, improving quality, increasing productivity and providing reliable equipment and as a result achieving organizational goals and objectives. This paper presents a new approach for selecting optimum maintenance strategy using qualitative and quantitative data through interaction with the maintenance experts. This approach has been based on linear assignment method (LAM) with some modifications to develop interactive fuzzy linear assignment method (IFLAM). The proposed approach is an interactive method which uses qualitative and quantitative data to rank the maintenance strategies. This method helps managers to find the best maintenance strategy based on the determined criteria. Maintenance experts also can provide and modify their preference information gradually within the interaction process so as to make the result more reasonable. The proposed method has been illustrated by a numerical example. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.