Fuzzy analytical hierarchy process for the selection of maintenance policies within petroleum industry

The selection of the maintenance policies is considered to be a complex matter at the strategic level and a trade-off between the criteria that should be considered is required to achieve the optimum maintenance selection. The purpose of this study is to develop a Fuzzy-Analytic Hierarchy Process multi criteria decision making model for the selection of maintenance policies within the petroleum industry. The model enables practitioners to decompose the structure of the hierarchy which assists in identifying the main criteria, sub-criteria and alternatives that impact on the selection of maintenance activities. The proposed AHP model is validated and in addition a comparison between classic and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is conducted in terms of different derivation methods. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis is performed to validate the response of each derivation method at different inconsistency ratio which proved that the proposed model can be considered as the most accurate presentation of the criteria, sub-criteria and alternatives that should be used to decide upon the strategic maintenance policies within petroleum industry.