Analysis of Potential Failure Modes in an Assembly Line by Fuzzy Expert Systems

The failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is widely applied in manufacturing industries in various phases of the product life cycle to evaluate the system, its design and processes for failures that can occur. The FMEA team often demonstrates different opinions and these different types of opinions are very difficult to incorporate into the FMEA by the traditional risk priority number model. In this paper, for each of the Occurrence, Severity and Detectivity parameters a fuzzy set is defined and the opinion of each FMEA team members is considered. These opinions are considered simultaneously with weights that are given to each individual based on their skills and experience levels. In addition, the opinion of the costumer is considered for each of the FMEA parameters. Then, the Risk Priority Numbers (RPN) is calculated using a Multi Input Single Output (MISO) fuzzy expert system. The proposed model is applied for prioritizing the failures of Peugeot 206 Engine assembly line in IKCo (Iran Khodro Company).