Abstract
Abstract: Until the last few decades, maintenance has not been considered of special importance by organisations. Thus, the number of studies that assess maintenance performance in a country is still very small, despite the relevance this area has to the level of national competitiveness. This article describes a multicriteria model integrating the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) with multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) to assess the maintenance performance of large, medium and small enterprises in Spain, before and after the recession, as well as the asymmetries in the state of maintenance between different activity sectors. The weightings are converted to utility functions which allow the final utility of an alternative to be calculated via a Multi-Attribute Utility Function. From the Spanish maintenance data for different industrial sectors in 2005 and 2010, 2400 discrete probability distributions have been produced. Finally, a Monte Carlo simulation is applied for the estimation of the uncertainty. The results show that the economic crisis experienced by Spain since 2008 has negatively affected the level of maintenance applied, rather than it being considered an area that could deliver cost reductions and improvements in productivity and quality to organisations.
Highlights
Maintenance is attaining a more important role in organisations because it can affect productivity and profitability [1,2,3], the useful lifespan of the facilities, the quality of the processes [4] and the fulfilment of safety and environmental standards
The research presented in this paper applies the geometric-mean method suggested by Buckley [44], because of its ease of application and comprehension in comparison with other methods [45] and it provides a unique solution to the reciprocal comparison matrix [46], avoiding the criticisms applicable to Chang’s extent analysis
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) in Belgian industries is analysed in Muchiri et al [56], which shows that equipment, maintenance cost and safety performance are the most commonly used indicators, while those related to maintenance work are less widely used; there is no correlation between the established maintenance objectives and the KPIs used, and in very few cases are the results of the KPIs used in decision making
Summary
Maintenance is attaining a more important role in organisations because it can affect productivity and profitability [1,2,3], the useful lifespan of the facilities, the quality of the processes [4] and the fulfilment of safety and environmental standards. The research presented in this paper applies the geometric-mean method suggested by Buckley [44], because of its ease of application and comprehension in comparison with other methods [45] and it provides a unique solution to the reciprocal comparison matrix [46], avoiding the criticisms applicable to Chang’s extent analysis It uses a different means of obtaining the utility functions from the previous literature. This article describes a multicriteria model that applies the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) and Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) to assess the state of maintenance in Spain. The model constructed integrates AHP, FAHP and MAUT multicriteria techniques, guaranteeing that the criteria and subcriteria are relevant for maintenance assessment of companies.
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