A Fuzzy DEMATEL framework for maintenance performance improvement: A case of Moroccan Chemical Industry

Abstract

Maintenance performance has vital importance for enterprises to continue their operations without any interruption. The satisfaction of stakeholders and the achievement of strategic goals in a manufacturing organization are highly dependent on effective maintenance performance. A good management system is essential to achieve the desired level of performance. A good management system could be divided into two main parts. The first part consists of identifying and determining the most relevant indicators for maintenance. The determined indicators have to be measured to offer a comprehensive examination of their performance. The second part consists of improving the maintenance performance; however, from the multi-criteria aspect, system performance improvement requires simultaneously various limited sources such as time, resources, and skills. Therefore, improving maintenance performance needs to assign priority to the most critical indicators to use limited resources effectively; however, this is not easy to achieve. Furthermore, the benefit of such efforts may be less than the expected level. In this context, this paper proposes an approach to improve maintenance performance based on the Fuzzy DEMATEL method. The proposed method identifies and priorities the most sufficient indicators to improve overall maintenance performance of an enterprise. Consequently, DMs can put in place the most appropriate action plan, which allows an effective and efficient enhancement of the maintenance performance. Then, the proposed method is implemented in the case of Moroccan Company which is one of the leaders in the chemical industry. The results of this research allow DMs to develop the most advantageous action plan for effective and efficient improvement of both local and global maintenance performance in the company.