A novel multiple-criteria decision-making-based FMEA model for risk assessment

Abstract Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a forward-looking risk-management technique used in various industries for promoting the reliability and safety of products, processes, structures, systems, and services. However, FMEA has many defects in practical experimentation. Therefore, this paper proposes a new model that uses multiple-criteria decision-making in combination with grey theory for FMEA. This approach has several advantages, such as being able to add the expected cost into the original risk priority number (RPN) to reflect the actual resource limitations, consider the different weights of severity, occurrence, detectability, and cost based on the best–worst method in RPN element calculation, and use the grey interval linguistic variables to manage information uncertainty. Furthermore, this study applied probability-based grey relational analysis to calculate the RPN, which preserves the information of prioritized failure modes through interval analysis. To demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed model, real data from an international electronics company were applied. The proposed model can provide an alternative risk priority solution for product development.