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FUZZY ASSESSMENT OF FMEA FOR A SEWAGE PLANT

a a
Ruey Huei Yeh & Mei-Huan Hsieh
a
Department of Industrial Management , National Taiwan University of Science and
Technology , 43, Keelung Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan
Published online: 09 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Ruey Huei Yeh & Mei-Huan Hsieh (2007) FUZZY ASSESSMENT OF FMEA FOR A SEWAGE PLANT, Journal of
the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, 24:6, 505-512, DOI: 10.1080/10170660709509064

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 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 505-512 (2007) 505

FUZZY ASSESSMENT OF FMEA FOR A SEWAGE PLANT

Ruey Huei Yeh* and Mei-Huan Hsieh
Department of Industrial Management
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
43, Keelung Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan

ABSTRACT
Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a widely used risk assessment tool to identify
the potential failure modes of a product or a process. By ranking the priorities for corrective
action according to the respective effects of the failures, the chance of the failures can be
reduced or eliminated. However, there could be several difficulties during conducting con-
ventional FMEA such as the subjective and qualitative description in natural language, the
relative importance among the risk ratings, the difference of risk representation among the
same ratings; and the knowledge shared among FMEA team members. Thus, a new risk as-
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sessment system based on fuzzy theory is proposed in this paper to deal with these difficul-
ties. Furthermore, an FMEA is conducted for a sewage plant to demonstrate the proposed
fuzzy assessment of FMEA.

Keywords: failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), risk assessment, fuzzy theory.

1. INTRODUCTION In a traditional FMEA, three parameters (se-

Quality and reliability of products and manu-
facturing processes are critical to the performance of
the final products. They are also important indices for
meeting customer satisfaction. In order to fulfill cus-
tomer requirement for quality and reliability, some
actions for assuring the quality and reliability of
products or processes should be taken by all engi-
neers involved. One of the most powerful methods
available for measuring the reliability of products or
process is failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA).
The procedure and some difficulties for conducting
FMEA are given in this section. The FMEA incorpo-
rating fuzzy theory is developed in Section 2. The
case of a sewage plant is given in Section 3 to dem-
onstrate the proposed fuzzy assessment of FMEA.
Finally, some conclusions are drawn in the last sec-
tion. *
verity, occurrence, and detection) are utilized to de-
scribe each failure mode by rating on a 1-10 scale.
Severity rating is the seriousness of the effect of a
failure to the next component, subsystem, system, or
customers. Occurrence rating is the likelihood or
frequency of the failure occurring with 1 being the
least chance of occurrence and 10 being the highest.
Detection rating is the inability to detect the failure or
the probability of the failure not being detected be-
fore the impact of the effect is realized.
Traditionally, the criticality assessment of
FMEA is performed by developing a risk priority
number (RPN). RPN is the product of the severity (S),
occurrence (O), and detection (D) ratings. Failure
modes having a higher RPN are assumed to be more
important and given a higher priority for corrective
action than those having a lower RPN. The procedure
for conducting FMEA is given below.

1.1 Traditional FMEA 1.2 The procedure of FMEA

The process for conducting FMEA can be di-

FMEA is a widely used quality improvement
vided into several steps as shown in Figure 1. These
and risk assessment tool in manufacturing industry.
steps are briefly explained as follows.
This tool combines the human knowledge and ex-
perience to: (1) identify known or potential failure
step 1. Collect the function of system and build a
modes of a product or process, (2) evaluate the fail-
hierarchical structure, divide the system into
ures of a product or process and their effects, (3) as-
several subsystems, composing of compo-
sist engineers to initiate corrective actions or preven-
nents.
tive measures, and (4) eliminate or reduce the chance
step 2. Determine the failure modes of each compo-
of the failures occurring.
nent and its effects. Assign the severity rating
(S) of each failure mode according to the re-
*
Corresponding author: rhyeh@mail.ntust.edu.tw spective effects on the system.
 506 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 6 (2007)

step 3. Determine the causes of failure modes and

estimate the likelihood of each failure occur-
ring, Assign the occurrence rating (O) of each
failure mode according to its likelihood of
occurrence.
step 4. List the approaches to detect the failures and
evaluate the ability of system to detect the
failures prior to the failures occurring. Assign
the detection rating (D) of each failure mode.
step 5. Calculate the risk priority number (RPN) and
establish the priorities for attention.
step 6. Take recommended actions to enhance the
performance of system.
step 7. Conduct FMEA report in a tabular form.

1.3 The difficulties of conducting FMEA

The conventional FMEA has been one of the

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well-accepted reliability and safety analysis tool due

to its visibility and easiness. However, FMEA team
usually suffers from several difficulties when con-
ducting FMEA in real industrial situation [7]. These
difficulties are summarized s follows.
1. The statement in FMEA is often subjective and
described qualitatively in natural language. It is
difficult for FMEA to precisely evaluate reliabil-
ity and safety of a product or a process.
2. The three parameters, severity(S), occurrence
(O), and detection (D) ratings, are assumed to
have the same importance. It neglects that the
relative importance among severity, occurrence,
and detection ratings may be different in pratice.
3. The RPN is generated by multiplying the (S), (O),
and (D) ratings. However, the same value of
RPN may imply difference risk representations.
For example, consider two different failure
modes having value of 6, 2, 1 and 2, 3, 2 for their
(S), (O), (D) ratings. Both of them will have the
same RPN value of 12, and hence the same pri-
ority for actions. In fact, their risk representa-
tions may be different in practice.
4. In conducting FMEA, the diversity and ability of
the FMEA team members are the most important
considerations. It is difficult to share the team
members’ experience. Thus, there is a need to
develop a knowledge-based assessment system.
For the difficulties mentioned above, several
researches of FMEA have been developed in order to
enhance the performance of FMEA. Bell [1] devel-
oped a method of causal reasoning in FMEA. Wang
[6] proposed an approach combining FMEA and the
Boolean Representation Method (BRM).
Figure 1. FMEA procedure
Teng and Ho [5] developed an approach to integrate
FMEA, product design, and process control to estab-
lish an overall quality control plan. Jenab and Dhillon
[4] proposed a group-based FMEA model to aggre-
gate the intuitive decision of experts about impor-
tance of parameters. Bowles and Pelaez [2] were the
first persons to propose a technique using member-
ship function in criticality analysis. Bragli [3] pro-
posed a technique to assign the weighted factors to
each parameter and normalized RPN value.
In this paper, we propose to incorporate the
fuzzy theory into FMEA in order to overcome the
difficulties in the risk assessment for conducting
FMEA. The process of the proposed assessment sys-
tem is developed in the following section.
2. INCORPORATING FUZZY
THEORY IN FMEA
Fuzzy system is a knowledge-based system
which is constructed from expertise and experience in
the form of fuzzy IF-THEN rules. Through building
knowledge-based model, expert knowledge and
judgment could be utilized to make the FMEA as-
sessment method more reasonable and convenient.
The overall structure for using fuzzy theory is shown
in Figure 2.
As illustrated in Figure 2, this approach is
similar to the fuzzy expert system and control system,
the inference process of fuzzy FMEA includes:
 Yeh and Hsieh: Fuzzy Assessment of FMEA for a Sewage Plant
Figure 2. Structure of FMEA based on fuzzy theory
1. Fuzzification:
Through defining the membership functions of
input fuzzy sets which are determined by expertise,
the three parameters, (S), (O), and (D) ratings, can be
transformed into fuzzy input.
2. Rule evaluation:
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By using the IF-THEN rules gathered from
experts and engineers and integrating them into fuzzy
rule, the fuzzy IF-THEN rules in fuzzy rule base can
be combined into a mapping from fuzzy inputs to
fuzzy conclusion.
3. Defuzzification:
Through defining the membership functions of
output fuzzy sets and the defuzzifier, fuzzy conclu-
sion can be converted into a real-valued risk repre-
sentation.
The detailed process of carrying out the pro-
posed FMEA is explained in following section.
2.1 Fuzzy membership function
This approach uses linguistic variables to rep-
resent the severity, occurrence, and detection of each
failure mode. Each linguistic variable has five lin-
guistic terms to describe it. These linguistic terms are
Remote (R), Low (L), Moderate (M), High (H), and
Very High (V).
In the proposed fuzzy FMEA approach, several
experts are required to develop the membership func-
tions of the three variables. Assume that there are n
experts asked to determine the membership functions.
Assign the degrees of competence Wi ( i = 1," , n )
for each of the experts according to their experience
and knowledge about this domain. The sum of the
degrees of competence must be one.
Furthermore, the triangular fuzzy number (a, b,
c) is used to develop the membership functions in this
approach. As illustrated in Figure 3, x represents the
specified rating and u(x) represents the value of its
membership function (the degree of membership). In
order to evaluate whether a given rating x ∈ X may
belong to a linguistic term, each of the experts is
asked to give the values a, b, c ∈ X in the interval [0,
10]. The value of membership function is zero such
as u(a) when the rating doesn’t belong to the linguis-
507
tic term. And, the value of membership function is
one such as u(b) when the rating completely belongs
to the linguistic term.
For example, three experts are asked to deter-
mine the membership function of the linguistic vari-
able severity. The process is presented as follow:
Let Wi be the degree of competence for ex-
pert i, and x ∈ X be a specified severity rating.
Each of experts provides a value of bi ∈ X to rep-
resent the most likelihood value which completely
belongs to the linguistic terms, and a pair of values
(ai , ci ) to represent the likelihood interval of the
linguistic terms. The values a, b, c for the triangular
fuzzy number are expressed in Equation (1):
3 3 3
a = ∑ Wi ai , b = ∑ Wi bi , c = ∑ Wi ci (1)
i =1 i =1 i =1
The results of b generated by experts are pre-
sented in Table 1. The input membership functions of
five linguistic terms for severity in this example can
be illustrated in Figure 4.
Risk, the output linguistic variable, is used to
represent the priority for corrective action with five
linguistic terms, Low (L), Fairly Low (FL), Moderate
(M), Fairly High (FH), and High (H). Experts are
also asked to determine this output membership func-
tions using triangular fuzzy number (a, b, c).
1
0.8
0.6
u(x)
0.4
0.2
0
0 a b c ∞
x
Figure 3. Triangular fuzzy number
 508 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 6 (2007)

Table 1. The value b of membership function Table 2. An example of fuzzy rules

bi Rule # Sev. Occ. Det. Risk
1 R R M, H, or V L
i Wi R L M H V
2 M M R, L, or M M
1 0.5 1 3 5 7 10 3 M M R or L FH
2 0.3 1 3.5 5.5 8 10 4 H M R or L H
3 0.2 1 3.7 6 8.5 10 5 H M M, H, or VH FH
b 1 3.29 5.35 7.6 10 6 V L L H

2.2 Fuzzy rule base

Fuzzy rule base is a collection of fuzzy

IF-THEN rules which are constructed from experts’
experience and judgment. In fuzzy IF-THEN rule, the
antecedent (the IF-part) is compared to the fuzzy in-
put variables, and the consequent (the THEN-part) is
the fuzzy output variable. Each fuzzy IF-THEN rule
is expressed as:
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Figure 5. The membership value for severity

IF severity is Remote and occurrence is Remote and
detection is High, THEN risk is Low.

Because each of the three input linguistic

variables has five linguistic terms, the total number of
combinations is 125 ( 5 × 5 × 5 ). All the combinations
should be grouped to generate the fuzzy rule base.
The example of some rules presented in Table 2.

2.3 Fuzzy inference process

Figure 6. The membership value for occurrence
In this paper, minimum inference engine is
used to combine the fuzzy IF-THEN rules in fuzzy
rule base and implicate the fuzzy conclusion. The
minimum inference engine uses: (1) min operator for
“and” in the IF-part of rules and max operator for the
“or” in the IF-part of rules, (2) the union combination
(max operator) to aggregate the consequence of indi-
vidual rules. In the following, an example is pre-
sented to explain the process of the minimum infer-
ence engine.
For example, suppose that there is a failure
Figure 7. The membership value for detection
mode with 6, 5, 6 for (S), (O), (D) ratings. Its mem-
bership values for severity, occurrence, and detection
Table 3. The membership values for the example
are illustrated in Figures 5, 6, and 7. These member-
ship function values are also listed in Table 3. Linguistic Var. Linguistic Term MF Value
M 0.5
Severity
H 0.18
1 R L M H V Occurrence M 0.85
0.8 M 0.25
Detection
0.6 L 0.27
u(x)
0.4
In Table 3, there are four combinations and can
0.2
fire the rule #2, 3, 4, and 5 in Table2. According rule
0
#2, the IF-part is the intersection of severity= M,
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
occurrence= M, and detection= M, with membership
x values of 0.5, 0.85, and 0.25, respectively. Thus, the
conclusion of risk= M has a membership value of
Figure 4. Membership functions for severity
min(0.5, 0.85, 0.25) = 0.25.
 Yeh and Hsieh: Fuzzy Assessment of FMEA for a Sewage Plant 509

Other conclusions are presented in Table 4. In risk of failure mode.

particular, there are two conclusions of risk= FH
with the value of 0.27 and 0.18 for the degree of Table 4. The fuzzy conclusion for the example
membership. Take the maximum value to be the un- IF THEN
ion combination. The fuzzy conclusions must be Sev. Occ. Det. Risk
transformed into a real-valued risk representation as M(0.5) M(0.85) M(0.25) M(0.25)
follows. M(0.5) M(0.85) L(0.27) FH(0.27)
H(0.18) M(0.85) M(0.25) FH(0.18)
2.4 Defuzzification H(0.18) M(0.85) L(0.27) H(0.18)

There are several defuzzification algorithms
have been developed. In this paper, the center aver-
age defuzzifier will be adopted due to its advantages
of plausibility, computational, simplicity, and conti-
nuity. In center average approach, yi is the center
of the i-th fuzzy set and wi is the height of the i-th
fuzzy set. The center average is similar to the mean
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After explaining the procedure of the proposed
fuzzy FMEA, a case of sewage treatment system will
be presented to demonstrate the proposed approach
and the traditional RPN approach in the next section.
3. CASE OF A SEWAGE PLANT

value of a random variable, and it determines a real
point y ∗ as:
y∗ =
∑yw
i i i
(2)
∑w i i
In the preceding example, the fuzzy conclu-
sions can be illustrated in the output (risk) member-
ship functions (see Figure 8). In Figure 8, the shadow
area means the fuzzy conclusion. The centers of the
M, FH, and H fuzzy sets are 3.7, 6.1, and 10 (the
point having the max membership value). The heights
of the M, FH, and H fuzzy sets are 0.25, 0.27, and
0.18 (the height of the shadow area).
By using Equation (2), center average defuzzi-
fier generates a real value y ∗ = 6.24 to represent the
In general, the purpose of a sewage plant is to
treat and control the wastewater or sewage, and then
to ensure the treated water fulfill the environmental
regulations. A sewage treatment system (STS) con-
tains several processing facilities or subsystems.
According to its functions, STS can be classi-
fied into five subsystems: sewage collection, precipi-
tation, treated water discharge, chemicals, and pre-
cipitate treatment. The facilities in these five subsys-
tems are shown in Figure 9. In order to mathemati-
cally express each failure mode, let Fij represent the
j-th failure mode in the i-th subsystem (i = A, B, C, D,
E, and j = 1, " , n ). After conducting the traditional
FMEA and the proposed FMEA, the partial results of
them are presented in Table 5 and compared in the
following section.

Figure 8. The fuzzy conclusion for the example

 510 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 6 (2007)

D-Chemicals

1. Chemical feeding machine (H2SO4)

2. Chemical feeding machine (PAC)
3. Chemical feeding machine (Polymer)

B-Precipitation
A-Sewage Collection C-Discharge
Sewage 1. Grit chamber Treated
1. Raw water intake 2. Rapid mixing basin 1.Treated water basin Water
2. Screen 3. Gelatification basin 2. Pump
4. Sedimentation basin

E-Precipitate Treatment

1. Concentration basin Mud

Pie
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2. Sludge dewatering machine

3. Sludge pump

Figure 9. Block diagram for a sewage plant

3.1 The results achieved by applying fuzzy FMEA. Other investiga-

tions can be carried out in the same manner. In addi-
Comparing the results of the traditional FMEA tion, the fuzzy rule base can also be revised or up-
with the proposed FMEA, the difference between dated when more information of a product or process
these two methods can be clearly observed in Table 5. is available. As a result, the proposed assessment
The failure modes FB 5 , FB 7 , and FC1 have the method can be continuously improved.
same RPN of 80 and the same priority. How-
ever, the different ratings combinations can infer dif- Table 5. The results of comparing traditional FMEA
ferent fuzzy risk. Thus, they have the fuzzy rankings with fuzzy FMEA
of 8, 16, and 13, respectively. By using the fuzzy Failure Risk Ranking Ranking
(S, O, D) RPN
FMEA, it is convenient for user to differentiate the Mode (fuzzy) (RPN) (fuzzy)
risk representations in the failures having the same FA1 (5, 6, 3) 90 3.09 7 9
RPN. FA 2 (3, 8, 3) 72 2.73 12 15
Consider that the failure modes FA 2 and FB1 (7, 3, 6) 126 6.75 3 1
FD 3 where the RPN is 72. The value of (S), (O), (D) FB 2 (5, 4, 2) 40 2.5 17 17
ratings are 3, 8, 3 and 6, 6, 2 for F A2 and FD 3 . FB 3 (6, 6, 3) 108 3.71 5 4
Although the RPN for both failure modes are the FB 4 (6, 7, 3) 126 4.33 3 3
same, the risk level may be different. The ranks of
FB 5 (5, 4, 4) 80 3.34 9 8
F A2 and FD 3 are 15 and 4, and the failure mode
FB 7 (4, 4, 5) 80 2.7 9 16
FD 3 has a higher priority than F A2 . Thus, the tradi-
FC1 (4, 5, 4) 80 2.82 9 13
tional FMEA may result in a different action.
In addition, the ranking produced by the pro- FD1 (5, 7, 4) 140 3.7 2 6
posed method doesn’t differentiate the failure modes FD 2 (6, 8, 4) 192 5.48 1 2
which have the adjacent ratings. Failure modes FA1 FD 3 (6, 6, 2) 72 3.71 12 4
and FE 5 , where (S), (O), and (D) ratings are 5, 6, 3 FE1 (4, 7, 3) 84 2.82 8 13
and 5, 6, 2. The fuzzy ranking is 9 for both failure FE 2 (4, 8, 2) 64 2.83 14 12
modes. This entails these two failure modes should
FE 3 (4, 2, 7) 56 2.88 16 11
be given the same priority. However, the traditional
FMEA method produces the resulting RPN of 90 and FE 4 (3, 8, 4) 96 3.7 6 6
60 for failure modes FA1 and FE 5 . FE 5 (5, 6, 2) 60 3.09 15 9
The analysis of the results produced by the tra-
ditional FMEA and the fuzzy FMEA methods shows
that a more accurate, reasonable ranking can be
 Yeh and Hsieh: Fuzzy Assessment of FMEA for a Sewage Plant
4. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a FMEA based on fuzzy theory
approach is proposed and a prototype of the risk as-
sessment experts system is developed. The analysis
of a sewage treatment system (STS) is presented to
demonstrate the proposed fuzzy FMEA method.
In practice, subjective judgment is described in
natural language which is sometimes inaccurate,
vague, and uncertain. When conducting FMEA, as-
signing the (S), (O), and (D) ratings in natural lan-
guage may produce an unrealistic and misleading
impression. As a result, the RPN produced by these
three ratings would overlook the relative importance
among these parameters and result in misunderstand-
ing.
The application of linguistic terms allows ex-
perts to provide a more reasonable and meaningful
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information for these three parameters. Fuzzy rule
base could allow experts to construct the more realis-
tic and logical rules. By using the fuzzy set and mem-
bership function, the imprecise information can be
improved to reflect real situations. Using the fuzzy
IF-THEN rules collected from experts, experts’
knowledge and experience can be incorporated in the
risk assessment tool. It is more convenient to differ-
entiate the risk representations among the failure
modes having the same RPN.
Through building knowledge-based model,
expert’s knowledge and judgment can be reserved
efficiently. Furthermore, the information of each fail-
ure can be revised or updated by experts. The pro-
posed assessment model can be continuously im-
proved.
The most critical disadvantage of the tradition
FMEA is that various combinations of the three pa-
rameter ratings may produce an identical value of
RPN; however, the risk representations may be thor-
oughly different. In this paper, a new risk assessment
technique is proposed to resolve the difficulties arisen
in conducting the procedure of the traditional FMEA.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is supported in part by a grant (NSC
94-2213-E-011-036) from the National Science
Council, Taiwan.
REFERENCE
1. Bell, D., L. Cox, S. Jackson, and P. Schaefer, “Using
511
causal reasoning for automated failure modes and ef-
fects analysis,” Proceedings of Annual Reliability and
Maintainability Symposium, Jan. 21-23, Las Vegas,
343-353 (1992).
2. Bowles, J.B. and C.E. Pelaez, “Fuzzy logic prioritiza-
tion of failures in a system failure mode, effects, and
criticality analysis,” Reliability Engineering and Sys-
tem Safety, 50, 205-213 (1995).
3. Braglia, M., M. Frosolini, and R. Montanari, “Fuzzy
criticality assessment model for failure modes and ef-
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fects analysis,” International Journal of Reliability,
Quality and Safety Engineering, 12, 291-307 (2005).
5. Teng, S.H. and S.Y. Ho, “Failure mode and effects
analysis: an integrated approach for product design
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Quality and Reliability Management, 13, 8-26 (1996).
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17-29 (2002)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Ruey Huei Yeh is currently a full professor and the
chairman of the Department of Industrial Manage-
ment at the National Taiwan University of Science
and Technology. He also serves as an associate editor
of the IEEE Transactions on Reliability. He received
both his M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial and Operations
Engineering from the University of Michigan – Ann
Arbor, and his B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the
National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan. His research
interests include reliability theory, applied probability,
warranty cost analysis, and quality management.
Mei-Huan Hsieh is a graduate student in the De-
partment of Industrial Management at the National
Taiwan University of Science and Technology. She
received her B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the
National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan. Her research
areas include reliability theory, warranty cost analysis,
and production scheduling.
(Received December 2006; revised March 2007; ac-
cepted June 2007)
 512 Journal of the Chinese Institute of Industrial Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 6 (2007)

應用模糊理論於廢水處理廠的失效模式與效應分析

葉瑞徽*、謝妹圜
國立台灣科技大學工業管理系
台北市基隆路四段 43 號

摘要
失效模式與效應分析(Failure Mode and Effect Analysis; FMEA)是一種被廣泛地運用餘
各種產業的可靠度評估手法，可用來辨別產品或製程中的失效模式，並依該失效所造
成的效應來排定矯正作業或預防措施施行的優先順序，藉此降低該失效發生的機會。
但是，實施失效模式與效應分析時，經常會發現一些主觀評估難以判斷的缺點，為了
改善這個缺點，本篇論文提出一種以模糊理論為基礎的重要性評估手法，並進一步以
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一座污水處理廠為例，分別以傳統的失效模式與效應分析和以模糊理論為基礎的失效
模式與效應分析進行污水處理系統的可靠性分析。

關鍵詞：失效模式與效應分析(FMEA)，可靠度，風險評估，模糊理論
(*聯絡人: rhyeh@mail.ntust.edu.tw)