Exploiting 2-tuple linguistic representational model for constructing HOQ-based failure modes and effects analysis

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a widely recognized tool used to identify potential failure risks for improving the reliability and safety of new products. A major function of FMEA is to evaluate, analyze, and determine the risk priority number (RPN) of each potential failure mode based on three risk assessment indices: severity, occurrence, and detectability in order to eliminate the potential risk. Unlike in conventional practice, where these indices are measured using discrete ordinal scales, this study adopts a 2-tuple linguistic computational approach to treat the assessments of the three risk indices and develop an FMEA assessment model to overcome the drawbacks of conventional RPN calculation. The house of quality (HOQ), a central tool of quality function deployment, is adopted to determine the more reasonable evaluations of the occurrence and detectability indices. The three risk indices are considered with different weights in the proposed model to obtain RPNs. Compared to conventional and fuzzy FMEA, the proposed FMEA model is more useful for determining practical RPNs for risk analysis and management in new product development (NPD). An example is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.