Prioritization of Corrective Actions from Utility Viewpoint in FMEA Application

Failure mode and effects analysis has been extensively used as a powerful method in a wide range of industries, but many scholars questioned the risk priority number method and proposed some new methods to improve. However, these methods still only evaluated from risks viewpoint while ignoring the effectiveness of corrective actions from utility viewpoint. In practical, it may not reach significant corrective effectiveness because of the corrective efficiency if corrective action is ignored. In addition, corrective actions may be treated as a complex system; they may not be simple and have an independent relationship with each other; the interdependence relationship; and the sequence or structure of hierarchy; even feedback relationship may exist. This study develops a fuzzy interpretive structural model in order to evaluate the structure of hierarchy and interdependence of corrective actions, and integrating the analytic network process with decision‐making and trial evaluation laboratory to take account into the causal relationship and influence strength of corrective actions to obtain the more accuracy weights. At last, a case study implemented to demonstrate that the proposed approach effectively circumvents the drawbacks of traditional risk priority number method and adapts flexibly to real‐world situations.