Journal Pre-proof

A reliable risk analysis approach using an extension of best-worst method based on

democratic-autocratic decision-making style

Mohammd Yazdi, Arman Nedjati, Esmaeil Zarei, Rouzbeh Abbassi

PII: S0959-6526(20)30465-0
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120418
Reference: JCLP 120418

To appear in: Journal of Cleaner Production

Received Date: 15 May 2019

Revised Date: 1 February 2020
Accepted Date: 3 February 2020

Please cite this article as: Yazdi M, Nedjati A, Zarei E, Abbassi R, A reliable risk analysis approach using
an extension of best-worst method based on democratic-autocratic decision-making style, Journal of
Cleaner Production (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120418.

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Credit author statement
Mohammd Yazdi:
Arman Nedjati:
Esmaeil Zarei:
Rouzbeh Abbassi:
1 A reliable risk analysis approach using an extension of best-worst method based

2 on Democratic-Autocratic decision-making style

3 Mohammd Yazdi a, Arman Nedjati b, Esmaeil Zarei c,d, Rouzbeh Abbassi e

4
5 a
University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

6 b Industrial Engineering Department, Quchan University of Technology, Quchan, Iran

7 c
Department of Occupational Health and Safety Engineering, Faculty of Health, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

8 d
Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

9 e
School of Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

10

11 Abstract

12 The procedure of decision making in failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) as an effective

13 and reliable risk assessment method needs a team of experts to deal with considerable

14 uncertainties related to risk evaluation process. Thus, an increasing number of FMEA models

15 according to multi criteria decision making (MCDM) have been widely covered. However, a

16 large number of developed methods have not cautiously examined the process of allocating

17 importance weights to the risk factors nor satisfying both democratic and autocratic decision

18 making styles. This paper aims to improve the efficiency of conventional FMEA by proposing

19 novel integrated MCDM approaches. To tackle the mentioned gaps, first a senior decision maker

20 (DM) commonly used a team of junior DMs (DM panel) as a supportive team to ensure the

21 reliability of final decisions. The junior DMs typically have different expertise levels based on

22 their knowledge, experience, and proficiency which therefore have different weights. Next, a

23 novel extension to the best-worst method is developed to obtain the weight of risk factors as well

24 as failure modes to compute the risk priority number (RPN). To present the applicability and

25 effectiveness as well as validation of the developed model, a realistic risk analysis on a

1
26 supercritical water gasification (SCWG) is considered. The outcome of sensitivity and

27 comprehensive analyses indicates that the introduced model provides valuable information to

28 assist risk management decision makers.

29 Keywords: Best-worst method (BWM), FMEA, Multi criteria decision making (MCDM),

30 Uncertainty, Supercritical water gasification (SCWG)

31 1. Introduction

32 Risk can be considered as a natural consequence of industrial sectors’ improvement. There is no

33 evidence to show that safety assessors can eliminate risks completely while they can reduce them

34 to an acceptable level (Mahdevari et al., 2014; Yazdi, 2019a, 2019b). Risk assessment methods

35 are then applied with consideration of their appropriate features to prevent the unpredicted

36 failure events. Numerous scientific approaches have been commonly introduced by growing

37 worldwide competition in order to identify the risk in process facilities. Viability and reliability

38 of the proposed methods are vital for safety assessors in long term periods (Abbassi et al., 2015;

39 Gentile et al., 2003; He et al., 2018; Kalantarnia et al., 2010; Markowski and Siuta, 2014;

40 Pasman and Suter, 2005; Shi et al., 2017; Xie and Guo, 2018; Yazdi and Kabir, 2017).

41 Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a well-known systematic risk assessment technique

42 used to recognize and evaluate the possible risk of a functional system. FMEA was initially

43 introduced in the aerospace industry in the 1960s and the procedures of FMEA considerably

44 improved in the 1980s as provided in detail by the US military as MIL-STD-1629A standard (US

45 Department of Defence, 1980). Conventional FMEA technique contains three main different risk

46 assessment factors, being severity (S), occurrence (O), and detection (D) of the unpredicted

47 failure modes (FMs). A risk priority number (RPN) is then computed by the production of three

2
48 risk factors (RFs) as = × × . Three risk assessment factors have a discrete numerical

49 scale in conventional FMEA, for example from 1 (the lowest score) to 10 (the highest score) to

50 measure the priority level of S, O, and D. After computation, the FMs are analyzed using

51 Pareto distribution (Liu et al., 2018). Typically, the higher scores relevant to the identified

52 FMs represent the first priorities for considering corrective actions for mitigating the risk. The

53 outcome of risk assessment is updated after taking account of the corrective actions and

54 mitigating measures until the obtained value of is reached at an acceptable level for all

55 identified FMs (Liu et al., 2013).

56 Moreover, FMEA is a well-organized continuous quality improvement technique according to

57 cross-functional decision maker (DM) and subsequent systematic brainstorming. However, by

58 increasing the number of FMEA engineering applications, it still suffers from some important

59 shortages in computing the scores and accordingly gives priority to obtain corrective

60 actions (Liu, 2016). The shortages fall into the two main categories, being the technical problem

61 with the scoring system and linguistic nature of computation. Some important

62 imperfections of conventional FMEA are provided as follows: i) the importance weight of each

63 RF is the same whereas in practical application, safety assessors need to give different weight to

64 S, O, and D. ii) RPN scores do not have a continuous scale with many holes. Based on the

65 multiplication of S, O, and D, merely 120 of the 1000 numbers could result. This increases the

66 possibility of acquiring same RPN scores for different FMs. iii) there is no logical explanation

67 related to mathematical production formula to calculate the RPN scores. It is debatable that

68 conventional FMEA completely failed to answer why three different RFs should be multiplied

69 by each other. iv) the direct and indirect relations among FMs and corresponding causes of FMs

70 are commonly not considered. v) FMEA are constructed on the base of three RFs in terms of

3
71 safety science and do not consider other possible risk assessment factors such as cost or

72 reputation of company. vi) conventional FMEA do not measure the efficiency and success of

73 obtained corrective actions according to time, economical budget, etc. vii) several mixture

74 production of RFs may result in the same RPN scores having different amounts of S, O, and D

75 e.g. (5, 6, and 4), (10, 4, and 3), and (2, 6, and 10) all have same RPN score output - 120). In this

76 regard, their hidden risk consequences may be entirely diverse. viii) FMEA team members,

77 either in a group or individually, commonly suffer from appointing an exact value for each RF

78 since typical data in FMEA is vague and unclear. ix) the translation of RF values is not the same.

79 The relationship between risk factor occurrence and its related ratings is nonlinear, whereas the

80 risk factor detection and its corresponding ratings have a linear relationship. In another words,

81 the three RFs are evaluated based on discrete ordinal scales of measurement. However, the

82 calculation of multiplication is meaningless on ordinal scales. x) the dependency between failure

83 modes is not considered in the conventional FMEA techniques.

84 In the past decade, safety assessors proposed various extensions to obtain much more reliable

85 results in order to cope with the aforementioned drawbacks and improve the technical outcome

86 of formal FMEA. Hadi-Vencheh and Aghajani (2013) proposed a comprehensive FMEA

87 according to the fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS)

88 which provide considerable capability for safety assessors to use qualitative terms to evaluate

89 FMs. Daneshvar et al. (2020) and Yazdi et al. (2017) used the relevant fuzzy membership

90 function to signify the S, O, and D and subsequently computed the priority of discovered FMs

91 engaging fuzzy similarity aggregation procedure. They claimed that the results of Fuzzy

92 Developed FMEA (FDFMEA) is more reliable than conventional FMEA. Chang et al. (2017)

93 applied a self-organizing map to depict the preventive and corrective actions to obtain the FMs

4
 94 of highest risk. Their approach defines a quick and easily understandable framework and

95 facilitate the decision-making tasks by FMEA operators. In another study, Sayyadi Tooranloo

96 and Ayatollah (2016) introduced an extension of conventional FMEA by utilizing intuitionistic

97 fuzzy concept to deal with the vague information and insufficient data during risk assessment

98 procedure. They tested the proposed model in a case study examining the failure modes for

99 quality of internet banking services.

100 As discussed by Stamatis (2003), typical FMEA is a subjective based concept which is further

101 required to utilize multi criteria decision making (MCDM) science. For this purpose, numerous

102 scholars have widely enhanced conventional FMEA technique by integrating with MCDM

103 science including AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) (Fattahi and Khalilzadeh, 2018), GRA

104 (Grey Relation Analysis) (Panchal and Kumar, 2016), DEMATEL (The Decision Making Trial

105 and Evaluation Laboratory) (Tsai et al., 2017), Distance measures (H. Liu et al., 2016; Liu et al.,

106 2014), TOPSIS (Bian et al., 2018; Selim et al., 2016), VIKOR (VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I

107 Kompromisno Resenje) (H.-C. Liu et al., 2016), PROMETHEE (Preference ranking organization

108 method for enrichment evaluation) (Liu et al., 2017), ELECTRE (elimination and choice

109 expressing reality) (Certa et al., 2017). Furthermore, there are investigations based on hybrid

110 MCDM techniques which contain AHP and TOPSIS (Ekmekçioğlu and Can Kutlu, 2012),

111 VIKOR and AHP (Song et al., 2013), GRE and DEMATEL (Chang, 2014), and finally

112 DEMATEL and TOPSIS (Chang et al., 2014).

113 MCDM techniques are continuously improved by time. The integration of FMEA with MCDM

114 techniques improves FMEA covering its fundamental gaps. In one approach, it can be concluded

115 that the most reliable improved method is one to handle high number of shortages. Another

116 aspect signifies that according to circumstances of the system, safety assessors can merely handle

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117 important shortages. As an example, when safety assessors are assessing a functional system

118 with a few number of FMs, mentioned shortage (ii) can be completely ignored. However, in spite

119 of conventional FMEA shortages, MCDM methods still suffer from some drawbacks and this

120 integration will surely have a considerable negative effect on the final risk priority results. (One

121 of the important extensions to conventional FMEA is using AHP to consider risk factors weight

122 to prioritize FMs. AHP have been applied by many scholars (Buckley, 1985; Nguyen and

123 Gordon-Brown, 2012; Wang et al., 2008; Xu and Liao, 2014) to deal with subjectivity of

124 pairwise comparison and several safety assessors have used them in different risk assessments

125 techniques (Gul and Guneri, 2016; Ilbahar et al., 2018; Yazdi et al., 2019b; Yazdi and Kabir,

126 2018; Zarei et al., 2019). Recently, Rezaei (2015) introduced Best worst method (BWM) as an

127 appropriate alternative instead of using AHP in MCDM problems. BWM method has

128 considerable advantages such as better consistency and obtaining optimal criteria/alternative

129 weight. However, BWM fails to tackle uncertainty and subjectiveness situations. Concerning the

130 shortages of conventional FMEA techniques as well as aforementioned BWM drawbacks, we

131 aim to put forward and propose a novel model as intuitionistic fuzzy best-worst method

132 (IFBWM-DA) with consideration of both democratic and autocratic (DA) decision making styles

133 to prioritize risk of the FMs.

134 The contribution of the this study is fourfold, the first contribution is intuitionistic fuzziness of

135 the developed model using intuitionistic fuzzy preference relation, second is introducing an

136 algorithm to improve the consistency of collected experts’ opinions automatically, third is

137 employing a group of experts as well as a senior expert in order to satisfy both autocratic and

138 democratic decision making style, and the last one is related to FMEA technique to compute the

139 optimum weights of criteria (RFs) as well as alternatives (FMs).

6
140 The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a classified literature review

141 relevant to BWM method as well as discussion on the contribution of the present study and the

142 research gap. In Section 3, the novel IFBWM-DA method is proposed and integrated with

143 FMEA technique to prioritize risk of FMs. Section 4 contains the application of the proposed

144 methodology on a common supercritical water gasification (SCWG) system and the obtained

145 results. Future research directions and conclusion are provided in Section 5.

146 2. Literature review on extension and development of BWM

147 BWM introduced by Rezaei (2015) is a novel and robust MCDM tool to obtain the subjective

148 weights of criteria and alternatives in a decision making problem. According to this technique,

149 the best (i.e. most profitable, most advantageous) and the worst (i.e. least profitable, least

150 advantageous) criteria/alternatives initially are considered by DMs. The specified criteria are

151 evaluated based on the best and worst criteria. Thereafter, a maximum/ minimum objective

152 function is made to compute the optimum weights of criteria. The weights of the alternatives

153 regarding different criteria can be determined using the same process. Rezaei (2016, 2015)

154 illustrates that BWM accomplishes meaningfully better results than AHP according to the

155 consistency ratio, and some of the other assessment principles including minimum violation,

156 overall deviation, and conformity. Therefore, it is concluded that BWM, with respect to its

157 merits, can be a proper alternative for AHP. In this regard, it has received considerable attention

158 since its proposal (see an overview paper on integrations and applications of the BWM (Liao et

159 al., 2019).

160 This is why in recent years BWM have been widely used by many scholars for different

161 engineering applications. As a prime effort, Rezaei et al. (2015) used BWM approach to derive

162 the most suitable criteria and proper methods to the suppliers considering the willingness of

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163 suppliers. Gupta and Barua (2016) recognized suitable enablers of technological innovation for

164 Indian micro-small and medium enterprises employing BWM. Torabi et al. (2016) used BWM to

165 compute the weight of risk factors in order to calculate the impact of each risk quantitatively.

166 They applied the proposed framework in a real case study and results confirmed that it could

167 effectively handle risk assessment and management process when implementing BCMS in an

168 organization. Following, in the same year, the first extension to BWM has been introduced by

169 Mou et al. (2016). The authors developed BWM by integrating it with intuitionistic fuzzy

170 interval scale in order to prioritize management of a health care system. Later, Mou et al. (2017)

171 improved their previously developed methodology by combining it with graph theory as a novel

172 graph-based group decision making approach called the intuitionistic fuzzy best-worst method.

173 Guo and Zhao (2017) proposed fuzzy BWM method to deal with the subjectivity of BWM

174 procedure. Three case studies were performed and the results indicate the procedure has a higher

175 consistency ratio than the BWM. Hafezalkotob and Hafezalkotob (2017) developed fuzzy BWM

176 by considering a group of DMs as well as one individual. They claim that the proposed model

177 helps the senior decision-maker to make a significant trade-off among autocratic and democratic

178 decision-making approaches. Aboutorab et al. (2018) recently developed BWM by using the

179 feature of Z-number in order to cope with the uncertainty and ambiguities of information in an

180 MCDM with a large amount of data.

181 BWM approach is also integrated with other engineering techniques such as SWOT for water

182 management scarcity (Chitsaz and Azarnivand, 2017); TOPSIS to classify urban sewage sludge,

183 sustainability, and transition (Ren et al., 2017); fuzzy Delphi in order to assess the barriers to

184 humanitarian supply chain management (Ghasemian Sahebi et al., 2017); VIKOR by reason of

185 web service selection (Serrai et al., 2017); simple additive weighting (SAW) to select wagons for

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186 internal transport (Stević et al., 2017); ELECTRE to possess high adoption rate in offshore

187 outsourcing initiatives across the case organizations (Yadav et al., 2018); airports evaluation and

188 ranking model using Taguchi loss function (Shojaei et al., 2018); analyzing key factors of

189 sustainable architecture by BWM-Complex proportional assessment method (COPRAS)

190 (Mahdiraji et al., 2018); water security sustainability evaluation by BWM-DEMATEL (R. Nie et

191 al., 2018); sustainability-resilience approach for evaluating hospital information systems based

192 on BWM-DEA (Data envelopment analysis) (Motevali Haghighi and Torabi, 2018), cloud

193 service selection using a Markov chain and BWM (Nawaz et al., 2018), and fuzzy-cumulative

194 prospect theory for comprehensive assessment of battery energy storage systems (Zhao et al.,

195 2019).

196 Regarding the application of BWM to the risk assessment techniques, it has been merely used in

197 FMEA to obtain the optimum value of risk factors for further FMs prioritization (Lo et al., 2019;

198 Lo and Liou, 2018; R. xin Nie et al., 2018; Tian et al., 2018). As an example, Lo et al. (2019)

199 engaged BWM to provide realistic weights for conventional FMEA’s risk assessment factors as

200 well as adding one more factor, economical cost. Subsequently, authors ordered FMs of CNC

201 rotary and indexing tables to obtain further corrective actions.

202 As mentioned earlier, five new fuzzy models have been introduced as an extension to BWM

203 method. Firstly, Mou et al. (2016) used an interval fuzzy scale number based on intuitionistic

204 fuzzy multiplicative feature and a group of decision makers. Using a similar procedure they

205 developed their study using a graph-based group decision making approach (Mou et al., 2017).

206 In another study, Guo and Zhao (2017) presented a fuzzy BWM model using triangular fuzzy

207 scale number by employing an expert in order to obtain pairwise comparison. Their study is

208 further developed by Hafezalkotob and Hafezalkotob (2017) employing a group of experts and

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209 an individual for comparison evaluation procedure. Finally, Aboutorab et al. (2018) proposed an

210 extension of Z-number to BWM.

211 Regarding contributions, a model is proposed to cope with ambiguity concerning the uncertainty

212 of the employed experts’ opinion using intuitionistic fuzzy number, where Guo and Zhao (2017)

213 and Mou et al. (2017,2016) used triangular and interval fuzzy weight, respectively. That is in our

214 proposed model, intuitionistic fuzzy number are used to compute the best and worst preference

215 degree of all criteria and alternatives. In this model, an intuitionistic fuzzy linear mathematical

216 programing model is used to obtain the weights of criteria/alternative whereas in Guo and Zhao's

217 (2017) study, the mathematical programing is non-linear. The consistency improvement was not

218 considered in Guo and Zhao (2017), Hafezalkotob and Hafezalkotob (2017), and Aboutorab's et

219 al. (2018) studies, and an interactive method is used by Mou et al. (2017,2016). To save time in

220 decision making process, an algorithm is introduced to deal with inconsistency situations.

221 Additionally, apart from Hafezalkotob and Hafezalkotob's (2017) paper, the rest of the studies

222 merely used democratic decision making styles. In addition, Hafezalkotob and Hafezalkotob

223 (2017) introduced a self-resilience parameter obtained by senior expert to deal with both decision

224 making styles whereas the authors believe that the proposed model in the mentioned studies is

225 much more autocratic and in a realistic case it can be considered as a pointless loop. That is, our

226 methodology has a more logical capability to tradeoff between autocratic and democratic

227 decision making styles in a realistic case.

228 In the case of FMEA risk assessment technique, as is mentioned in the previous sub-section, all

229 four studies (Lo et al., 2019; Lo and Liou, 2018; R. Xin Nie et al., 2018; Tian et al., 2018)

230 employed simple BWM approach to use the result the weighs of risk factors as criteria. In our

231 study, the proposed IFBWM-DA approach is used to obtain the optimal weights of RFs (criteria)

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232 as well as failure modes (alternatives). Therefore, our proposed methodology is unique, and has

233 considerable novelty in comparison with the previous main studies from all contributors.

234 3. Methodology

235 A novel risk priority ranking model to be applied in FMEA is presented, which is according to

236 the Intuitionistic fuzzy BWM with consideration of both democratic and autocratic decision

237 making process called IFBWM-DA. The structure of the model and all required steps for

238 detection of the risky FMs are depicted in Figure 1.

239 Firstly, as in all FMEA studies, the information about process function and component should be

240 prepared. The potential FMs should then be specified. Finally, the general causes and effects,

241 potential effect of each failure on the whole system as well as existing safety barriers and

242 mitigating controls should be prepared. The above mentioned three steps can usually be

243 conducted by a group of experts (FMEA team) or individually. In this study, FMEA team

244 including multi-independent experts (in this study the term expert is the same as DM), satisfying

245 both autocratic and democratic decision making aspects and having different expertise, is

246 considered for the proposed model

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247

248 Figure 1. Assessment FMEA framework for the proposed priority model IFBWM-DA

249 Due to risk evaluation subject, given that there are cross functional experts =

250 1,2, … , in a FMEA team which have responsibility to evaluate the failure modes =

251 1,2, … , as risk factors = 1,2, … , which are commonly S, O, and D in a typical

252 FMEA. However, in this article, the risk factors depend on three more criteria being, time - (the

253 essential time to achieve the recommended preventive or corrective actions for diminishing or

254 removing the effect of failure); cost - (the cost for diminishing or removing the effect of failure),

12
255 and profit - (the benefit acquired from diminishing or removing the effect of failure) (Fattahi and

256 Khalilzadeh, 2018). Each expert , is determined a weight ≥ 0 while ∑ ! = 1 to

257 show their respective capabilities and power in the risk analysis procedure. AHP, fuzzy AHP

258 (FAHP), and simple averaging methods are common ways to provide acceptable weight and

259 distinguish their capabilities to prevent cognitive biases discovered by any single DM’s judgment

260 (Yazdi, 2018a). In this study, a simple average method applied by Kabir et al. (2020, 2018) is

261 engaged to DM weighing purpose with consideration of several criteria being experience,

262 educational level, job tenure, and age.

263 Realistic FMEA team, as a committee or panel of DMs, should contain a group of DMs

264 (democratic-style) and one as superior expert or senior DM (autocratic-style). It is vital to

265 consider both mentioned styles, however, it is usually ignored by most scholars (i.e integrating

266 techniques). As an example, the proposed risk assessment technique is almost the same as the

267 peer-review strategy of typical scientific journals where senior DM (editors) commonly have

268 close collaboration with a group of reviewers (DMs panel) in order to appraise the submitted

269 papers. The reviewers are experts in their fields and have freedom to express their judgment

270 about the papers. The editors can also evaluate the papers as well as evaluating the expertise

271 degree of each reviewer in a panel of junior DMs. Since, senior DM collect the panel of junior

272 DMs’ comments, which can be fuzzy or crisp preference, he or she has enough authority to make

273 the exchange among his/her decision and the aggregated group decision of the junior decision

274 makers to determine the final decision (it can be a weight, rank, etc). However, one important

275 question that may arise if the senior DM has the power to obtain the final decision, is then what

276 is the purpose of DMs evaluation. It seems that the autocratic style is much more important than

277 the democratic one and it can be considered as a pointless loop. Therefore, it is vital to know

13
278 what the exact importance contribution of senior DM and junior DMs panel to obtain the final

279 results in decision making problem is. Figure 2 illustrates how our proposed model can satisfy

280 both democratic and autocratic decision making styles in order to avoid being faced with a

281 pointless loop. As can be seen in our proposed decision making model, some authority of senior

282 DM is transferred to the system policy, which significantly improves the realistic and

283 complaisance aspects.

14
284

285 Figure 2. Typical hierarchical structure of decision-making problem and our proposed decision

286 making model structure

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287 In the proposed FMEA technique, the policy of health, safety, and environment management

288 system (HSEMS) can easily specify the importance weight of senior DM as well as junior DMs

289 panel and subsequently deal with the mentioned decision making concerns.

290 As can be seen in Figure 3, the evaluation of and in the proposed FMEA technique can

291 be conducted by a senior DM and DMs panel. Figure 4 illustrates the main concept of IFBWM-

292 DA procedure on how to integrate both autocratic and democratic decision making styles. The

293 detailed steps are provided in Figure 5 as IFBWM-DA algorithm.

294

295 Figure 3. Considering the democratic and autocratic decision making styles

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296

297 Figure 4. The main framework of IFBWM-DA method

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298

299 Figure 5. The proposed IFBWM-DA algorithm

300 The steps of the proposed IFWBM-DA are provided as follows:

301 Step 1: Creating the decision making system

302 In the first step, the decision criteria (risk factors), alternatives (failure modes), a group of DM

303 (heterogeneous group of experts) as well as a senior DM (i.e,. "#! , #$ , … , #% & for

304 criteria, "'! , '$ , … , '% & for alternatives, " !, $, … , &, and senior ) need to be

305 specified. For simplification, all alternatives and criteria in this paper are considered as failure

306 modes, and risk factors, respectively.

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307 Step 2: Determining the Best (B) and Worst (W) criteria/alternatives

308 Specify the intuitionistic fuzzy preference degree of the Best (most important) and Worst (least

309 important) criteria and alternatives. According to the created decision system, the best criterion

310 and alternative and the worst ones should be identified by DMs panel and senior DM at this step.

311 Definition 1: (Atanassov, 1986) Considering ( as a fixed set, intuitionistic fuzzy in ( is

312 introduced:

313 = "〈*, +, * , -, * 〉 |* ∈ ( &, (1)

314 where +, * and -, * ∈ [0,1] are defined as degree of membership and non-membership

315 functions, respectively, satisfying 0 ≤ +, * +-, * ≤ 1, ∀* ∈ (.

316 Besides, the degree of hesitation of * ∈ shows the uncertainty degree of * to and is given

317 as 6, * = 1 − +, * − -, * , and explicitly satisfies 0 ≤ 6, * ≤ 1, ∀* ∈ (.

318 For convenience, Xu (2007) called 8 = +9 , -9 , 69 an intuitionistic fuzzy value (IFV) and

319 Szmidt and Kacprzyk (2009) proposed a function to compute crisp value of IFV in the

320 mathematical form as:

321 : 8 = 0.5 1 + 69 1 − +9 (2)

322 Definition 2: Let the pair +9 , -9 be an intuitionistic fuzzy preference number (IFPN) with

323 conditional 0.1 ≤ +9 , -9 ≤ 0.9, and +9 . -9 ≤ 1 based on Saaty (1977) comparison scale as

324 provided in Table 1.

325 Table 1. The comparison between scale 1-9 scale and 0.1-0.9 scale

Description Main Saaty 1-9 scale* Equivalent to Saaty scale 0.1-0.9**

Extremely preferred 9 0.9
Very strongly preferred 7 0.8

19
 Strongly preferred 5 0.7
Moderately preferred 3 0.6
Equally preferred 1 0.5
Moderately not preferred 1/3 0.4
Strongly not preferred 1/5 0.3
Very strongly not preferred 1/7 0.2
Extremely not preferred 1/9 0.1
* Other values between 9 and 1/9 can be obtained to present compromise.
** The rest of values between 0 and 1 can be obtained to present compromise.

326 Assume that in an MCDM problem, there exist > criteria, DMs provide IFPNs via pairwise

327 comparisons by using Saaty scale. Thus, + , - denotes the relative preference of the criterion

328 to the criterion while + = 1 − - , - = 1 − + , and + = 1, - = 1. In other words,

329 + ,- is the relative preference when is the best element and/or is the worst one.

330 It should be noted that according to the concept of BWM method (Rezaei, 2015), there are a total

331 of 2> − 3 pairwise comparison (+> − 2 Best-to-Others (BO) IFPN comparisons, +> − 2 Worst-

332 to- Others (WO) IFPN comparisons, and +1 Best-to-Worst (BW) IFPN comparison), whereas in

333 AHP method, a > $ − > /2 pairwise comparison are required. Obviously, when the number of

334 criteria and alternatives are increased, the pairwise comparisons between the two methods are

335 exponentially different.

336 Definition 3: Zeng (2012) Let ' = A %×% be a 2> − 3 pairwise comparison in terms of

337 IFPNs by DMs, the aggregation of DMs’ opinion utilizing the intuitionistic fuzzy weighted

338 averaging (IFWA) operator for all criterion/alternative (RF /FM ), can be obtained as:

E'FA! , A$ , … , A% G = H I A
I !

LM LM
339 = J1 − ∏%I !F1 − + G , ∏%I !F- G N (3)

20
340 where

341 A = F+ , - G is the ultimate aggregated subjective opinion based on the IFPN,

342 AI = F+ , - G is the IFPN that is mapped according to linguistic terms of DMs’ opinion

343 O = 1, … , on the assessment of with respect to ,

344 is the given weight to each DM.

345 Definition 4: ' is consistent if

346 +P, × + = +P, , + × + ,Q = + ,Q , R ≤ ≤ ≤ E, , ∈ (4)

347 and

348 -P, × - = -P, , - × - ,Q = - ,Q , R ≤ ≤ ≤ E, , ∈ (5)

349 Once, the DMs represent their preference judgments by IFPNs, respect to advantage of definition

350 4, the consistency can be checked and can modify some preference information to improve the

351 consistency (for more details see Step 4).

352 Step 3: Obtaining the priority weights of / (criteria/ alternative)

353 Assume that optimal weight vector is E ∗ = T!∗ , T$∗ , … , T%∗ U , where T ∗ F+∗ , - ∗ G ∈ are

354 IFPNs, the +∗ and - ∗ are the membership and non-membership degrees of significance,

355 respectively. To simplify the procedure, firstly the degree of membership only is considered. In

356 respect of acceptance of IFPNs consistency (Definition 4), there are +P∗ /+∗ = +P, and +∗ /+Q
∗
=

357 + ,Q . To satisfy the above mentioned conditions for all ∈ , it is necessary to obtain the

358 optimal weight vector by a minimax objective function of absolute differences as Y+P∗ /+∗ − +P, Y

21
359 and Y +∗ /+Q
∗
−+ ,Q Y for all ∈ . Therefore, the following mathematical model with

360 consideration of both DMs panel and senior DM opinions can be established.

361 Model 1:

a∗ a∗ a∗ a∗
min \]. max _` ab∗ − +P, `d , _`a∗ − + ,Q `d + 1 − ] max _` ab∗ − +P, `d , _`a∗ −
c c
362
c e c e
fgh ijklm

363 + ,Q `d r
nlkopq fg

364 Subject to

365 ∑% ! +
∗
= 1

366 +∗ ≥ 0, for all ∈ .

367 where ] ∈ [0,1] is an integration resilience coefficient factor which makes a tradeoff between

368 DMs panel and senior DM. when ] = 0 this signifies that the senior DM merely emphasizes

369 his/her opinions and the decision making system is autocratic style. However, when ] = 1 it

370 indicates that senior DM only relies on DMs panel judgment.

371 According to short discussion by Rezaei (2016), the non-liner Model 1 can be transferred into a

372 linear model. Given that C = "s! , s$ , st , … , s% & is the set of criteria/(or can be alternatives), the

373 following model for membership degree can be constructed as follow:

374 Model 2:

375 min u = ]v + 1 − ] v ∗

376 Subject to

22
377 Y+∗ − + ,w +w Y
∗
≤ v ∀ ∈ #

378 Y+∗ − + ,x +x∗ Y ≤ v ∀ ∈ #

379 Y+∗ − + y,w +w

∗
Y ≤ v∗ ∀ ∈ #

380 Y+∗ − + y,x +x∗ Y ≤ v ∗ ∀ ∈ #

381 ∑% ! + ∗ = 1

382 v, v ∗ , +∗ ≥ 0, for all ∈ .

383 Where + y denotes the senior DM’s preference and + refers to junior DM’s preference weights.

384 (By solving Model 2, the first part of the optimal IFPNs weights can be determined, i.e.

385 +!∗ , +$∗ , … , +%∗ U

which include all degrees of membership in IFPNs weights. Using the same

386 concept, Model 3 can also be derived with consideration of non-membership degree as:

387 Model 3:

∗
zb zc∗ ∗
zb zc∗
min \]. max _` − -P, `d , _` − - ,Q `d + 1 − ] max _` − -P, `d , _` −
zc∗ ∗
ze zc∗ ∗
ze
388
fgh ijklm

389 - ,Q `d r
nlkopq fg

390 Subject to

391 ∑% ! - ∗ = 1

392 - ∗ ≥ 0, for all ∈ .

393 Model 3 is equivalent to Model 4.

23
394 In a similar way, the following model for non-membership degree is developed as:

395 Model 4:

396 min u ∗ = ]{ + 1 − ] { ∗

397 Subject to.

398 Y| ∗ − | ,w |w∗ Y ≤ { ∀ ∈ #

399 Y| ∗ − | ,x |x ∗ Y ≤ { ∀ ∈ #

400 Y| ∗ − | y,w |w ∗ Y ≤ { ∗ ∀ ∈ #

401 Y| ∗ − | y,x |x∗ Y ≤ { ∗ ∀ ∈ #

402 ∑% ! - ∗ = 1

403 {, { ∗ , - ∗ ≥ 0, for all ∈ .

404 Where | y denotes the senior DM’s preference and | refers to junior DM’s preference weights.

405 By executing Model 4, the second optimal part of the IFPNs weights can be determined, i.e.

406 -!∗ , -$∗ , … , -%∗ U

which include all non-membership degrees in IFPNs weights. Therefore, the

407 optimal weight vector of the RFs and FMs can be obtained by:

408 E ∗ = T!∗ , T$∗ , … , T%∗ U

= +!∗ , -!∗ , +$∗ , -$∗ , … , +%∗ , -%∗ U
(6)

409 It is considered that, ]v + 1 − ] v ∗ and ]{ + 1 − ] { ∗ are fully consistent based on DMs

410 panel and senior DM judgment. However, in real human judgment according to their different

411 circumstances, human judgments may not be precise nor achieving full consistency. Thus,

24
412 consistency is vital to be evaluated and in case of inconsistency the decision making system it

413 must be repaired.

414 Step 4: Checking consistency

415 In order to acquire reasonable results, before computing final priority weights of alternatives

416 (FMs) and criteria (RFs), it is vital to find out the consistency of Intuitionistic fuzzy preference

417 relations. When all preferences are at appropriate level, the assessor can consider step 6,

418 otherwise, step 5 is considered to remodel the inconsistency. Consistency is a significant issue in

419 the decision making process and lack of consistency may lead DMs to misleading decision

420 making solutions. Similar to conventional AHP, Rezaei (2016) provided a crisp consistency

421 index (CI) and consistency ratio (CR) to measure the degree of consistency for the obtained

422 preference relations. Rezaei (2016) expressed that when the derived CR is less than the specific

423 value obtained from the consistency index table, the preference relation has acceptable

424 consistency; otherwise the collected preference relation is inconsistent and must be returned to

425 DMs for reevaluation until acceptable. As mentioned in the literature, there are a few studies that

426 have extended BWM method. For instance, proposed fuzzy BWM by Hafezalkotob and

427 Hafezalkotob, (2017) did not check the consistency and two introduced fuzzy BWM based

428 methods (Guo and Zhao, 2017; Tian et al., 2018) manage the consistency of fuzzy preference

429 relationships by mapping fuzzy preference relations into the corresponding crisp ones and then

430 checking consistency using Saaty’s method where # ≤ 0.1 is acceptable. Only Mou et al.,

431 (2016) proposed interval consistency checking by using intuitionistic fuzzy multiplicative

432 weighted method.

433 It should be added that all mentioned extension studies to BWM method completely ignored how

434 to mend the inconsistent preference relations into a consistent one. Rezaei’s method is a strong

25
435 techniqe to check the consistency but fails to repair or improve the inconsistent preference

436 relations automatically except returning the inconsistent preference relations to DMs. Many

437 scholars discussed how the interactive process in AHP (much more popular compared with

438 BWM method) is time consuming, and sometimes DMs may not be interested in reexamining the

439 preference relations and have no motivation to continue the procedure with the tedious

440 supervision especially when the number of participants is too large (Chang et al., 2008; Xu and

441 Liao, 2014).

442 Thus, in this step, we give two Algorithms due to consistency checking of the IFBWM-DA

443 method. The first Algorithm is based on the concept of BWM technique, namely consistency

444 ratio. The second Algorithm used Intuitionistic fuzzy preference features and fixed threshold

445 limit. The novel Algorithm is introduced in step 5 to restore inconsistent Intuitionistic preference

446 relations automatically into a consistent one.

447 Algorithm 1: Consistency ratio

448 Based on definition 4, when both following conditions are satisfied, the obtained IFPNs from

449 DMs are then fully consistent.

450 +P, × + ,Q = +P,Q and -P, × - ,Q = -P,Q (7)

451 According to Table 1, the preference and non-preference degrees of best criterion over criterion

452 , criterion over the worst criterion, and the best criterion over the worst one is Criterion P ≻

453 Criterion ≻ Criterion Q for all ∈ .

454 In other words:

455 +P, , + ,Q ∈ "0.5, 0.6, 0.7, … , +P,Q & ; -P, , - ,Q ∈ "0.5, 0.4, 0.3, … , -P,Q & (8)

26
456 It should be mentioned that the highest values of +P,Q and -P,Q are 0.9, and 0.1 respectively.

457 Thus, consistency may decrease/increase when some conditions arise having opposition to the

458 definition of consistency as:

459 +P, × + ,Q ≠ +P,Q and -P, × - ,Q ≠ -P,Q (9)

460 In order to check the consistency, it is necessary to compute the maximum consistency degree of

461 the obtained IFPNs. For this purpose, it is clear that in inequalities of Equation 9, +P, ×

462 + ,Q should be higher or lower than +P,Q as well as -P, × - ,Q should be higher or lower

463 than -P,Q . Thus, the maximum approximation can be:

464 +P, × + ,Q = +P,Q and -P, × - ,Q = -P,Q (10)

465 Inequalities of equation (10) can be converted in to equalities by introducing two variables as ‡

466 and ˆ for membership and non-membership preference, respectively.

467 F+P, − ‡G × F+ ,Q − ‡G = +P,Q + ‡ and F-P, + ˆG × F- ,Q + ˆG = -P,Q − ˆ (11)

468 Based on consistency maximization assumption, +P, = + ,Q = +P,Q and -P, = - ,P = -P,Q ,

469 equation (11) can be transferred into equation (12) as:

470 ‡$ − F1 + 2+P,Q G‡ + F+P,Q

$
− +P,Q G = 0 and ˆ $ + F1 + 2-P,Q Gˆ + F-P,Q
$
− -P,Q G = 0

471 (12)

472 According to Table 1, the possible IFPNs are between 0.1 and 0.9. After solving Equation 12

473 using different IFPNs, two acceptable consistency values may be obtained from which the

474 highest consistency is selected. Thus, the related maximum possible amounts named as ‡ ∗

475 and ˆ ∗ can be obtained where ‡ ∗ and ˆ ∗ are the maximum value of ‡ and ˆ, respectively. In this

27
476 accordance, two consistency indices , # ! and # $ , can be derived for membership and non-

477 membership preference relations. The details of the consistency index are provided in Table 2.

478 Table 2. Consistency index and the maximum value of ‡ and ˆ

+P,Q 0.5 0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9
# ! ‡∗ 2.11 2.21 2.3 2.4 2.48 2.57 2.67 2.74 2.83
-P,Q 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
# $ ˆ ∗ 0.07 0.09 0.11 0.11 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.12 0.12

479 It should be added that the value of # ! ‡ ∗ and # $ ˆ ∗ are the maximum deviations when the

480 obtained IFPN has minimum consistency. This means that the divergence value between # ! and

481 optimal solution v and v ∗ in model 2, (or # $ and optimal solution { and { ∗ in model 4), has to be

482 the largest possible in order that the consistency degree of IFPN be acceptable. Furthermore, the

483 deviation in models 1 and 3 are minimum when v + v ∗ = 0, { + { ∗ = 0, and subsequently IFPN

484 is consistent. In contrast, when u = v + v ∗ = # ! ‡ ∗ , u ∗ = { + { ∗ = # $ ˆ ∗ , the deviation

485 in models 1 and 3 are maximum which means that the obtained IFPN has unacceptable

486 consistency (worst consistency is equal to one). The consistency ratio can be therefore proposed

487 to check degree of consistency as:

Š‹ Š ∗ •‹ •∗
488 # = max ‰Œ• •∗
, Œ• ’ ∗
“ (13)
Ž ‘

489 From the conventional viewpoint, the smallest amount of CR means the better consistency (see

490 an example in Appendix 1). However, as discussed by Mou et al. (2017), this definition of

491 consistency cannot work in some conditions. Therefore, after confirming some preferences the

492 result will be reliable when CR is not close to 1 (worst consistency). Although CR is a powerful

493 technique, Mou et al. (2016) noticed that in an inconsistent situation, the provided procedure to

28
494 deal with it is difficult and much more complex. Thus, Algorithm 2 is provided so as to check

495 consistency in a simpler way.

496 Algorithm 2: Intuitionistic consistency preference

497 The consistency of intuitionistic preference relation is acceptable if:

, • =
!
” ∑% ! ∑%I ! Y+̅ − + Y + Y-̅ − - Y + Y6̃ − 6 Y ≤ ™ (14)
$ %–! %–$
498

499 where ” is the distance measure introduced by Szmidt and Kacprzyk (2009),

500 = š %×% with š = (+ , - being an intuitionistic preference relation and + and - are

501 membership and non-membership relations, respectively.

502 • = š̅ %×% is the perfect multiplicative consistency intuitionistic preference relation:

503 for › > + 1, let š̅ = (+̅ , -̅ , where

c¡Ÿ¡Ž
ž∏c¡Ž a ac
¢Ÿ£Ž Ÿ
504 +̅ = c¡Ÿ¡Ž c¡Ÿ¡Ž (15)
ž∏c¡Ž a a c ‹ ž∏c¡Ž !–aŸ !–a c
¢Ÿ£Ž Ÿ ¢Ÿ£Ž

c¡Ÿ¡Ž
ž∏c¡Ž
¢Ÿ£Ž zŸ zc
505 -̅ = c¡Ÿ¡Ž ¤¡Ÿ¡Ž
(16)
ž∏c¡Ž z z c ‹ ž∏c¡Ž !–zŸ !–z c
¢Ÿ£Ž Ÿ ¢Ÿ£Ž

506 for = + 1, let š̅ = š ,

507 for › < , let š̅ = F+̅ , -̅ G.

508 and ™ is the consistency threshold which allowable consistence is ™ ≤ 0.1. It should be added

509 that the acceptable consistency ratio derived by Saaty (1977) is 0.1 which is maximum
29
510 eigenvalue of a multiplicative preference relation obtained by DMs and a randomness process.

511 With the same concept, distance measure clearly considers the ratio of an intuitionistic

512 preference relation (≈ randomness and perfect multiplicative consistency intuitionistic

513 preference relation (≈ maximum eigenvalue . It is worth mentioning that the main advantage of

514 Algorithm 2 compared with Algorithm 1 is that it considers both membership and non-

515 membership preference as well as hesitation degree.

516 Step 5: Consistency repairing Algorithm

517 It is common that IFPN obtained by DMs have unacceptable consistency because of lack of

518 knowledge about the system or difficulty to discriminate the degree to which some

519 alternatives/criteria are better than others. Thus, authors strongly believe that the best way to

520 avoid possible inconsistency is help the DMs obtain consistent preference relations. It can be

521 surely returned the inconsistence preference obtained from experts’ opinions in order to

522 reevaluation, but as mentioned earlier it is time consuming and sometimes DMs are not keen to

523 participate one more time. Furthermore, it should be done individually because when the number

524 of DMs is too high, consistency checking will be applied after DMs aggregation preferences.

525 Subsequently, finding DM(s) who present inconsistent preferences to be impossible. Therefore, it

526 is necessary to develop an automatic procedure to solve this problem.

527 The consistency repairing Algorithm is provided at three steps as follows:

528 Step 5.1: Assume that « is the number of iterations. Thus, with consideration of « = 1, the

529 perfect multiplicative consistency intuitionistic preference relation can be constructed by

530 Algorithm 2 where • from ¬ -

.

531 Step 5.2: Compute the distance measure of ”F • , ¬ -

G between ¬ -
and •

30
 ”F • , ¬
! - - -
-
G= ∑% ! ∑%I ! Y+̅ − +® Y + Y-̅ − -® Y + Y6̃ − 6® Y (17)
$ %–$ %–!
532

533 If ”F • , ¬ -
G ≤ ™, then the result is ¬ -
, otherwise go to step 5.3.

Step 5.3: Establish new fused intuitionistic preference relation as ¬

-∗ -∗
534 -∗
= ¯š̃ ± , š̃ =
%×%

-∗ -∗
535 ¯+® , -® ± ,

536 where

³
-∗ ² Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ a
a • Ÿc ´
537 +® = a
³
² Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ • Ÿc ´‹ !–a
a
³
² Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ !–a
• Ÿc ´
(18)

³
-∗ ²Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ z
z •Ÿc ´
-® = ³
²Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ z
•Ÿc ´ ‹ !–z
³
²Ÿc Ž¡´ ⋅ !–z
•Ÿc ´
(19)
z
538

539 , = 1,2, … , >

540 where ¶ ∈ [0,1] is nominated as controlling factor obtained by experts. The smaller value of ¶

541 means that ¬ -∗

is closer to ¬ -
. To achieve the acceptance consistency (step 5.2), the

542 procedure can be continued by applying iteration « = « + 1.

543 Using the proposed algorithm, the consistency of obtained preference relation by DMs will

544 automatically be improved considerably. The proposed algorithm compared with interactive

545 methods can save a lot of time during decision making procedure. Owing to time saved, the

546 introduced algorithm has merits for DMs to make quick decisions. The algorithm is convergent

547 and computed intuitionistic preference relation has less transmissibility (see an example in

548 Appendix 2).

549 Step 6: Compute the priority vector

31
550 The final priority vector of each alternatives’ (FMs) respect to the weight of criteria (RFs) are

551 computed by Equation 20 as:

552 E jm·lqkj·o¸lŸ = ∑% ! E¹qo·lqojk

∗
c
⨂ Ejm·lqkj·o¸l
∗
Ÿ
(20)

553 where = , , , and other possible criteria.

554 Then, using Equation (2), the crisp value of E can be obtained as a final weight for each

555 alternative. ∎

556 Using the proposed IFBWM-DA method, the final weights of each alternative are assumed as

557 RPN of each FM similar to the conventional method. The reason is, that as discussed by Yazdi

558 (2018), the main purpose of FMEA study is prioritizing FMs to obtain further corrective actions,

559 thus, applying different RPN computing (average, geometrical, etc) is not logical. Based on

560 above-mentioned discussion, in this study we considered RPN¾gŸ = E¾gŸ .

561 4. Application of the developed Methodology: A Case Study

562 The suggested framework is applied to a supercritical water gasification (SCWG) system.

563 SCWG technology is a hydrothermal conversion process to eliminate and recover the pollution

564 containing organic and toxic contents produced during sewage sludge treatment. It has gradually

565 interested many private and governmental sectors in recent years because of environmental and

566 economic priorities. Sewage sludge has increased concerns due to its considerable source of

567 generated pollutants including heavy metals, pathogenic microorganism, and organic

568 compounds. It also includes nitrogen, phosphor, and valuable organic materials which can be

569 recovered in a process. For example, 41% of European Union (EU) sewage sludge in the year

570 2005 was used for agriculture, 17% in landfill, 19% demolished by incineration, 12% for

32
571 compost usage, and the remainder of sewage sludge was used for other purposes (Kelessidis and

572 Stasinakis, 2012). These statistics show the considerable advantages since the current annual

573 sewage sludge production by EU is 11 million tonnes and it is predicted to reach 13 million

574 tonnes by the end of the year 2020. It is also projected that while landfill methods decrease in the

575 incineration tools is substituted with them (Adar et al., 2017).

576 SCWG as a novel technique having considerable merits compared with conventional techniques,

577 requires high safety and reliability assessments. Thus, it is vital to identity the most critical

578 failure modes in an SCWG system that have the possibility to occur during processing.

579 Accordingly, cause and effect analysis can be applied to prioritize critical failure modes and

580 obtain further corrective actions. As can be seen from Figure 6, a typical process flow diagram of

581 an SCWG system includes several stages summarized as follows (Reddy et al., 2014). Initially,

582 the waste water having normal pressure is boosted to reach operating pressure condition. In the

583 next step, the products are heated according to operating temperature. Afterwards, the materials

584 are formed by gasification under super critical cooling and established depressurizing and is

585 subsequently transferred into the normal atmosphere. The three parts including gas, liquid, and

586 solid materials are then separated. According to Adar et al. (2017), an SCWG system contains

587 important components being raw material preparation, pressurization, reactor, heat exchanger,

588 and separation unit. In order to obtain more details refer to Reddy et al. (2014). According to the

589 above mentioned explanations, a cause and effect analysis is initially conducted for a typical

590 SCWG system. Using literature, a cause and effect diagram (Fish Bone diagram since it looks

591 like a fishbone) classifies the reasons for an SCWG system failure as in Figure 7. As can be seen

592 from Figure 7, only ten system functions are identified as causes behind a functional failure. In

593 this accordance, Fish Bone diagram is further developed into FMEA table sheets (Table 3).

33
594

595 Figure 6. A typical process flow diagram of SCWG system

34
596

597

598 Figure 7. Fish Bone diagram of a typical SCWG system failure

599

35
600

601 Table 3. FMEA sheets for typical SCWG system

SCWG system failure

Function Failure modes Potential failure causes Potential failure effect Convectional Possible corrective actions
RPN
Pump FM.1 Chocking Cavitation, poor Loss of flow, casing, noise 21 NDT (Nondestructive Test),
FM.2 Motor burn out maintenance strategies, and vibration, erosion of 40 increasing the number over hull,
inappropriate operational impeller, complete updating failure analysis procedure.
practices operation loss.
Gas-liquid separation FM.3 Design failure High liquid level, internals Low system performance. 40 Redesigning, based on modification
damage, improper design, by employing third party company.
plugged liquid outlets,
high flow rate
Environment FM.4 Noise Feedstock gasification, Complain about 16 Providing noise reduction system,
FM.5 Odor high pressure in pump environmental aspects, 16 using proper PPE, applying a system
reduce the efficiency of management control.
operators (loss hearing,
loss concentration, etc).
Heat exchanger FM.6 Design failure Improper design, excessive Low system performance. 18 NDT (Nondestructive Test),
FM.7 Coolant load, stream pressure loss, 36 Redesigning, based on modification
temperature fouling deposition, by employing third party company,
increasing number site inspections.
Operation conditions FM.8 Catalyst Series pump breakdown, Explosion after high 72 Applying a system management
FM.9 Temperature improper materials, pressure, Low system 60 control, Re-designing coolant system
overrate weather conditions, performance. by employing third party company,

36
 FM.10 Solid matter feedstock properties 72
content
FM.11 Pressure 54
overrate
Material FM.12 Incompatible Aggressive operation Different type of accidents, 120 Holding safety courses for operator to
properties circumstances, low system shut down, reduce human error
FM.13 Incompatible experience employers leakage. 80
fittings
Reactor FM.14 Design failure Improper design, harsh Different types of 125 Redesigning, based on modification
FM.15 Plugging operation conditions, accidents including fire 72 by employing third party company,
FM.16 Corrosion inadequate feedstock and explosion, system shut 135 Safety Integrity Level (SIL) study to
FM.17 Low resistance compositions, wall down, person injury, high 135 deal with different environment,
thickness, energy consumption, low NDT (Nondestructive Test),
system performance. Radiography test.
Feedstock FM.18 Compositions Lack of adequate control, Leakage in different part 24 NDT (Nondestructive Test), Holding
FM.19 Precipitation, lack of interim product of process, accidents, 18 safety courses for operator to reduce
not testing (e.g. measurable system shutdown. human error, increasing the number
homogenous specifications as size, of site inspections.
flow color, constitution etc.)
Control FM.20 Breakdown High passing circuit, New equipment 18 Installing electricity release by
panel/Electricity FM.21 Short circuit improper material, preparation, failure in 21 Earthing system, using proper PPE,
different parts of system. Providing protective system.
Operator FM.22 Landsman error Low experience Different types of 24 Holding safety courses for operator to
FM.23 Improper employers, improper accidents, Low system 60 reduce human error, NDT
maintenance teaching service, personal performance. (Nondestructive Test), redesigning,
FM.24 Fatigue/malfunc problems (e.g. stress, 45 based on modification by employing

37
tion tension, etc.) third party company.

38
602 3.1. Illustration of proposed IFBWM-DA method on FMEA

603 This subsection provides the algorithm that FMEA utilized to gain the preference of SCWG

604 failure modes and the summery of the procedures’ implementation.

605 Step 1: Creating the decision making system

606 To subjectively compute the importance weights of risk factors as well as identified failure

607 modes, a heterogeneous group of six independent DMs and a senior DM, having a relevant

608 background in the specified industrial sector, are employed. A crucial questionnaire including

609 SCWG system description, FMEA table, basic BWM method explanation, and asking basic

610 questions such as age, education level, job experience, and professional position for weighting

611 purposes is then shared with participants. As mentioned in the methodology section, in this

612 study, the risk factors according to the three criteria are time (the essential time to achieve the

613 determined corrective actions for diminishing or removing the effect of failure), cost (the cost for

614 diminishing or removing the effect of failure), and profit (the benefit acquired from diminishing

615 or removing the effect of failure).

616 Once the completed questionnaires are received, to improve the consistency of experts’ opinions,

617 questionnaires with some critical comment were re-sent for further possible modifications by

618 interested DMs in order to be reconsidered. The simple averaging technique is used to compute

619 every single expert’s capability and respective weights assignment. The experts’ associated

620 weights, profile, and detailed description of their weighting procedure are shown Appendix 3.

621 Step 2: Determining the Best and Worst criteria/alternatives (RF /FM ),

622 Using obtained weights of experts, the evaluation of DM panel and senior DM using Table 1 on

623 the risk factors are acquired. According to proposed IFBWM-DA method, evaluation of all
39
624 DMs’ preference degrees are collected to obtain the importance weight of risk factors and failure

625 modes. The details obtained and evaluation regarding risk factors are provided in Table 4. The

626 same procedure is undertaken for failure modes (alternatives) and the details are provided in

627 Appendix 4.

40
628 Table 4. Best and worst risk factors, BO (best to others), and WO (worse to others) vectors identified by DMs using IFPNs

Team member evaluation

Autocratic Democratic
Senior DM DM.1 DM.2 DM.3 DM.4 DM.5 DM.6 DMs panel
DMs weight - 0.141 0.169 0.155 0.197 0.183 0.155 aggregated using
Best Occurrence Occurrence Cost Occurrence Cost Occurrence Severity Equation 3
Severity (0.60, 0.40) (0.60, 0.35) (0.60, 0.20) (0.60, (0.60, 0.40) (0.60, (0.50, 0.50) (0.417, 0.634)
0.30) 0.40)
BO vector of risk factors

Occurrence (0.50, 0.50) (0.50, 0.50) (0.60, 0.20) (0.50, (0.65, 0.40) (0.50, (0.60, 0.35) (0.450, 0.584)
0.50) 0.50)
Detection (0.70, 0.20) (0.75, 0.20) (0.60, 0.30) (0.70, (0.70, 0.30) (0.70, (0.60, 0.35) (0.328, 0.710)
0.20) 0.35)
Time (0.80, 0.25) (0.80, 0.30) (0.70, 0.40) (0.80, (0.80, 0.30) (0.80, (0.75, 0.20) (0.226, 0.696)
0.30) 0.30)
Cost (0.85, 0.30) (0.85 ,0.30) (0.50, 0.50) (0.75,0.20) (0.50, 0.50) (0.80, (0.80, 0.20) (0.327, 0.645)
0.30)
Profit (0.90, 0.20) (0.85, 0.30) (0.75, 0.35) (0.65, (0.60, 0.40) (0.85, (0.85, 0.20) (0.255, 0.668)
0.40) 0.30)
Worst Profit Profit Profit Time Time Profit Profit -
Severity (0.90, 0.20) (0.80, 0.30) (0.85, 0.30) (0.70, (0.75, 0.25) (0.70, (0.90, 0.10) (0.795, 0.256)
0.50) 0.25)
WO vector of risk factors

Occurrence (0.80, 0.20) (0.80, 0.20) (0.90, 0.10) (0.60, (0.80, 0.20) (0.80, (0.80, 0.20) (0.802, 0.198)
0.40) 0.20)
Detection (0.70, 0.25) (0.75, 0.30) (0.80, 0.30) (0.80, (0.80, 0.20) (0.70, (0.80, 0.30) (0.778, 0.308)
0.60) 0.30)
Time (0.60, 0.30) (0.50, 0.30) (0.60, 0.50) (0.50, (0.50, 0.50) (0.60, (0.60, 0.40) (0.553, 0.409)
0.50) 0.30)
Cost (0.55, 0.40) (0.50, 0.40) (0.50, 0.45) (0.50, (0.40, 0.30) (0.60, (0.60, 0.40) (0.519, 0.386)
0.40) 0.40)
Profit (0.50, 0.50) (0.50, 0.50) (0.50, 0.50) (0.55, (0.60, 0.30) (0.50, (0.50, 0.50) (0.529, 0.437)
0.40) 0.50)

41
629 Step 3: Obtaining the priority weights of / (criteria/ alternative)

630 Combine the transformed evaluation of risk factors into models 2 and 4 for the membership, and

631 non-membership degrees of importance, respectively. To obtain evaluation of DMs on risk

632 factors, based on information provided in Table 4 for obtaining optimal IFPNs weights of all

633 criteria, the following nonlinearity constrained optimization problem can be built according to

634 models 2 and 4. According to system policy in this study, the ] value (integration resilience

635 coefficient factor) is considered to be 0.5 in order to tradeoff between senior DM and DMs panel.

636 By solving Model 2, the optimal solution for six different risk factors can be obtained

637 as:+nl¸lqo·¿
∗
= 0.156, +À¹¹Áqlk¹l
∗
= 0.142, +fl·l¹·opk
∗
= 0.182, +ÃoÄl
∗
= 0.181, +Åph·
∗
=

638 0.173, +ÆqpÇo·

∗
= 0.165, and u = 0.078, v = 0.073. and v ∗ = 0.082.

639 By solving Model 4, we get the optimal solution for six different risk factors as: -nl¸lqo·¿
∗
=

640 0.166, -À¹¹Áqlk¹l

∗
= 0.158, -fl·l¹·opk
∗
= 0.164, -ÃoÄl
∗
= 0.172, -Åph·
∗
= 0.176, -ÆqpÇo·
∗
= 0.164,

641 and u ∗ = 0.129, { = 0.125, and { ∗ = 0.133.

642 Therefore, with respect to Equation 6, the optimal weight vector of the risk factors is:

643

644 E ∗ = T nl¸lqo·¿
∗
, T À¹¹Áqlk¹l
∗
, T fl·l¹·opk
∗
, T ÃoÄl
∗
, T Åph·
∗
, T ÆqpÇo·
∗ U
=

645 0.156,0.166 , 0.142, 0.158 , 0.182, 0.164 , 0.181, 0.172 , 0.173, 0.176 , 0.165, 0.164 U
.

646 The same procedure is done for failure modes (alternatives) regarding each risk factor and the

647 details are provided in Appendix 4.

648 Step 4: Checking consistency

42
649 According to algorithm 1, the consistency ratio can be computed for evaluation of criteria. As

650 +PQ = 0.5 and -PQ = 0.1, we check Table 1 and get # ! = 2.11 and # $ = 0.07.

È.ÈÉÊ È.!$Ë
Subsequently, the consistency ratio is equal to max ‰ , “ = 1.85, which means that the
$.!! È.ÈÉ
651

652 results are reliable because CR is far from 1 (least consistency). However, the results are not

653 fully consistent because CR is not close to zero (fully consistency), thus, obviously we may

654 improve the consistency through amending some preferences as discussed in the following step.

655 Step 5: Consistency repairing Algorithm

656 Suppose that senior DM provided his/her IFPNs information in a set of criteria (severity,

657 occurrence, detection, time, cost, and profit) as represented in Table 4. Accordingly, we use

658 Algorithm 2 in order to create the perfect multiplicative consistency intuitionistic preference

659 relation for all collated expression, • = š̅ %×% .

660 Using Equations 15 and 16, the member of š̅ can be computed. Lets take š̅!Ì , we have = 1 and

661 = 6 and:

Î
ž∏Í¢‘ aŽ a Í
662 +̅!Ì = Î Î
=
ž∏Í¢‘ aŽ a Í ‹ ž∏Í¢‘ !–aŽ !–a Í

Î
ž∏Í¢‘ È.Ï È.Ð È.É È.Ì È.ÐÐ
663 Î Î
= 0.563
ž∏Í¢‘ È.Ï È.Ð È.É È.Ì È.ÐÐ ‹ ž∏Í¢‘ !–È.Ï !–È.Ð !–È.É !–È.Ì !–È.ÐÐ

Î
ž∏Í¢‘ zŽ z Í
664 -̅!Ì = Î Î
=
ž∏Í¢‘ zŽ z Í ‹ ž∏Í¢‘ !–zŽ !–z Í

Î
ž∏Í¢‘ È.Ì È.t È.$ È.t È.Ï
665 Î Î
= 0.534
ž∏Í¢‘ È.Ì È.t È.$ È.t È.Ï ‹ ž∏Í¢‘ !–È.Ì !–È.t !–È.$ !–È.t !–È.Ï

43
666 6̃!Ì = 1 − 0.563 − 0.563 ≤ 0, thus = 0

667 Similarly, we can compute the rest of š̅ and then obtain the distance measure (”) using

668 Equation 14. In this accordance, ” = 0.107 ≅ 0.1 ≤ ™ = 0.1. The consistency checking for the

669 other IFPNs of criteria can be done by following the same procedure and we no longer represent

670 it. The amount of distance measured clarified that the collected IFPNs is consistent but not fully

671 consistent. Therefore, considering the interactive repairing process is time consuming, we can

672 automatically improve the consistently by engaging the consistency repairing Algorithm.

673 With Equations 18 and 19, we can obtain the intuitionistic preference relation ¬ for the first

674 iteration. Taking the controlling factor as ¶ = 0.7, thus, we have the repaired membership and

675 non-membership degree for the senior DM expression as:

Ž Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ a
²ŽÓ
a • Ÿc Ô.Õ
∗ È.ÐÌt Ô.Ö × È.Ï Ô.Õ
+®!Ì! = ³
²ŽÓ Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ • ŽÓ Ô.Õ Ž Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ !–a
² ŽÓ • ŽÓ Ô.Õ
= Ô.Ö ×
= 0.448
a a ‹ !–a È.ÐÌt È.Ï Ô.Õ ‹ È.ÏtÉ Ô.Ö × È.Ì Ô.Õ
676

Ž Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ z
²ŽÓ
z •ŽÓ Ô.Õ È.ÐtÏ Ô.Ö ⋅ È.Ì Ô.Õ
!∗
-®!Ì = ³
²ŽÓ Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ •ŽÓ Ô.Õ ‹ !–z Ž Ž¡Ô.Õ ⋅ !–z
•ŽÓ Ô.Õ
= = 0.580
z z ²ŽÓ È.ÐtÏ Ô.Ö ⋅ È.Ì Ô.Õ ‹ È.ÏÌÌ Ô.Ö ⋅ È.Ï Ô.Õ
677

678 Similarly, the distance measure ” using Equation 17 is obtained as 0.038 ≤ 0.1 which means

679 that the new obtained IFPNs are fully consistent. After checking the rest of the DMs panel

680 comparisons, we can see that all the other preference relations have enough consistency and it is

681 not necessary to repair them.

682 Step 6: Compute the priority vector

683 As mentioned earlier, the optimum vector weight computation of each alternatives (FMs)

684 response to the different criteria (RFs) using IFBWM-DA method are provided in Appendix 4.

685 The final vector weight of failure modes as well as risk factors are provided in Table 5.

44
686 Table 5. Vector of risk factors and collective risk assessment based on the corresponding

687 Intuitionistic fuzzy value

Severity Occurrence Detection Time Cost Profit

FM.1 0.040 0.040 0.043 0.045 0.039 0.039 0.039 0.042 0.045 0.041 0.045 0.043
FM.2 0.046 0.044 0.040 0.039 0.039 0.038 0.038 0.040 0.045 0.046 0.040 0.041
FM.3 0.044 0.045 0.042 0.045 0.039 0.039 0.040 0.041 0.045 0.045 0.038 0.039
FM.4 0.039 0.038 0.040 0.040 0.045 0.043 0.042 0.040 0.045 0.045 0.038 0.039
FM.5 0.038 0.038 0.040 0.040 0.038 0.041 0.045 0.045 0.043 0.046 0.040 0.039
FM.6 0.038 0.038 0.038 0.038 0.044 0.043 0.043 0.043 0.046 0.043 0.044 0.043
FM.7 0.042 0.043 0.046 0.042 0.041 0.039 0.041 0.044 0.041 0.043 0.038 0.043
FM.8 0.043 0.038 0.043 0.042 0.041 0.040 0.040 0.039 0.039 0.037 0.040 0.041
FM.9 0.046 0.048 0.044 0.043 0.041 0.040 0.039 0.044 0.039 0.043 0.043 0.042
FM.10 0.043 0.040 0.045 0.045 0.041 0.039 0.038 0.039 0.046 0.042 0.041 0.041
FM.11 0.044 0.047 0.046 0.045 0.041 0.039 0.042 0.044 0.040 0.043 0.043 0.043
FM.12 0.040 0.040 0.039 0.041 0.043 0.041 0.038 0.039 0.041 0.043 0.042 0.045
FM.13 0.042 0.042 0.042 0.038 0.039 0.043 0.039 0.039 0.040 0.041 0.045 0.043
FM.14 0.041 0.040 0.040 0.041 0.039 0.041 0.040 0.039 0.041 0.039 0.042 0.039
FM.15 0.044 0.046 0.043 0.042 0.043 0.041 0.042 0.037 0.040 0.041 0.039 0.039
FM.16 0.040 0.040 0.038 0.039 0.039 0.041 0.041 0.039 0.039 0.040 0.041 0.040
FM.17 0.040 0.042 0.040 0.040 0.043 0.045 0.042 0.039 0.041 0.041 0.041 0.041
FM.18 0.042 0.042 0.042 0.041 0.043 0.043 0.045 0.045 0.040 0.041 0.045 0.044
FM.19 0.039 0.040 0.045 0.043 0.044 0.045 0.046 0.044 0.039 0.041 0.040 0.040
FM.20 0.040 0.038 0.041 0.040 0.045 0.045 0.043 0.041 0.041 0.038 0.039 0.040
FM.21 0.039 0.040 0.041 0.043 0.039 0.039 0.045 0.048 0.039 0.041 0.044 0.045
FM.22 0.040 0.040 0.038 0.039 0.047 0.045 0.046 0.043 0.041 0.038 0.045 0.045
FM.23 0.045 0.047 0.046 0.047 0.043 0.045 0.044 0.043 0.039 0.041 0.043 0.041
FM.24 0.046 0.044 0.042 0.041 0.047 0.044 0.042 0.042 0.041 0.040 0.045 0.044
RFs weight 0.156 0.166 0.142 0.158 0.182 0.164 0.181 0.172 0.173 0.176 0.165 0.164

688 In order to determine the final ranking of failure modes, Equation 20 is utilized to obtain the

689 corresponding Intuitionistic fuzzy value of each failure mode. Subsequently, using Equation 2

690 the crisp value of intuitionistic fuzzy value is computed. All the failure modes are then

691 prioritized and ranked by these descending crisp values.

692 Taking E× .! as an example, we have:

45
693 E × .! =

694 0.040,0.040 ⊗ 0.156, 0.166 ⊕ 0.043,0.045 ⊗ 0.142,0.158 ⊕ 0.039,0.039 ⊗

695 0.182,0.164 ⊕ 0.039,0.042 ⊗ 0.181,0.172 ⊕ 0.045,0.041 ⊗ 0.173,0.176) ⊕

696 0.045,0.043 ⊗ 0.165,0.164 = 0.04171,0.04164 .

697 Using Equation 2:

698 : . 1 = 0.5 × 1 + 1 − 0.04171 − 0.04164 × 1 − 0.04171 = 0.91834

699 The remainder of the results for all failure modes are provided in Table 6.

700 Table 6. The Intuitionistic fuzzy value and normalized crisp value of all failure modes

Failure Intuitionistic fuzzy Normalized

modes value crisp value
FM.1 0.04171 0.04164 0.04166
FM.2 0.04122 0.04140 0.04170
FM.3 0.04122 0.04234 0.04168
FM.4 0.04161 0.04088 0.04169
FM.5 0.04071 0.04158 0.04173
FM.6 0.04233 0.04138 0.04163
FM.7 0.04133 0.04236 0.04167
FM.8 0.04086 0.03945 0.04177
FM.9 0.04179 0.04335 0.04162
FM.10 0.04216 0.04097 0.04165
FM.11 0.04248 0.04350 0.04157
FM.12 0.04051 0.04150 0.04174
FM.13 0.04102 0.04100 0.04172
FM.14 0.04044 0.03981 0.04179
FM.15 0.04175 0.04097 0.04167
FM.16 0.03967 0.03983 0.04184
FM.17 0.04121 0.04132 0.04170
FM.18 0.04283 0.04267 0.04157
FM.19 0.04216 0.04216 0.04162
FM.20 0.04156 0.04031 0.04170
FM.21 0.04116 0.04268 0.04168
FM.22 0.04303 0.04165 0.04158

46
 FM.23 0.04318 0.04394 0.04152
FM.24 0.04381 0.04248 0.04151

701 The comprehensive analysis results illustrate that the most serious failure modes are . 16 ≻

702 . 14 ≻ . 8 which should be assigned the highest priority for consideration of relevant

703 corrective actions.

704 In order to clarify the merits of the proposed method, a comparative analysis is conducted

705 between the introduced IFBWM-DA approach and three different methods namely conventional

706 FMEA, Fuzzy FMEA method (Adar et al., 2017), and Multi-granule linguistic FMEA (R. xin

707 Nie et al., 2018). As can be seen from Table 7, ranking of failure modes are provided and

708 compared with conventional FMEA and such available methods. In conventional FMEA, the

709 FMs rankings are computed in terms of mathematical production of RPNs. In the Fuzzy FMEA

710 method, RPNs are calculated based on aggregated fuzzy triangular numbers and then converted

711 into corresponding crisp values. According to the principles of R. xin Nie et al. (2018) method,

712 the objective and subjective importance weights of risk factors are determined in Multi-granule

713 linguistic FMEA.

714 From Table 7, the results yielded by four different methods illustrate that only the proposed

715 IFBWM-DA approach can properly handle the mentioned shortages of typical FMEA in

716 literature (i, ii,…, and ix). As an example, there are many identical rankings in the balance of the

717 methods whereas only the IFBWM-DA approach is able to properly distinguish between the

718 FMs rankings. This outcome validates to some degree the results obtained by the proposed

719 approach. Table 8 can makes a physical explanation for the IFBWM-DA approach considering

720 subjectivity in qualitative assessment, uniting the merits of fuzzy FMEA and Multi-granule

47
721 linguistic FMEA, while fuzzy FMEA and Multi-granule linguistic FMEA only deal with three of

722 four mentioned shortages respectively.

723 Table 7. Ranking of failure modes based on different methods

Failure Conventional Multi-granule Proposed

modes FMEA Fuzzy FMEA linguistic FMEA IFBWM-DA
FMEA
FM.1 12 5 5 15
FM.2 9 6 5 9
FM.3 9 2 1 11
FM.4 14 1 8 10
FM.5 14 22 8 5
FM.6 13 18 1 17
FM.7 10 21 1 14
FM.8 5 23 7 3
FM.9 6 16 7 19
FM.10 5 11 7 16
FM.11 7 17 7 21
FM.12 3 9 6 4
FM.13 4 10 6 6
FM.14 2 4 1 2
FM.15 5 8 5 13
FM.16 1 24 9 1
FM.17 1 13 3 7
FM.18 11 12 6 22
FM.19 13 20 6 18
FM.20 13 19 4 8
FM.21 12 15 4 12
FM.22 11 14 2 20
FM.23 6 3 2 23
FM.24 8 7 2 24

724 Table 8. Comparison of IFBWM-DA FMEA, Conventional FMEA, Fuzzy FMEA, and Multi-

725 granule linguistic FMEA in dealing with mentioned shortages in literature

Mentioned shortages Conventional Multi-granule IFBWM-DA

Fuzzy FMEA
in literature FMEA linguistic FMEA FMEA
i × × ×
ii ×

48
 iii ×
iv × ×
v × × ×
vi × × ×
vii × × ×
viii ×
ix × × × ×
x × × ×
Note: ‘ ’ indicates the mentioned method has ability to address the specific shortages and ‘×’
indicates the method cannot address the shortages.

726 3.1. Importance analysis of integration resilience coefficient factor (φ)

727 In order to understand the importance weight of democratic and autocratic decision making style

728 in the proposed IFBWM-DA approach, the risk preference of the 24 discovered failure modes by

729 differing resilience coefficient factor (φ) is provided in Table 9. This analysis can assist the

730 system to define priorities and facilitate the process of risk assessment. In addition, the outcomes

731 of the importance analysis of integration resilience coefficient factor are presented in Figure 8.

732 The approach illustrates that the risk priority ranking of 24 identified failure modes is very

733 sensitive to the variation of coefficient factor (φ). Different φ values differing from 0 to 1

734 indicate that the risk priority ranking of only 2 of the 24 identified failure modes (8.4%) is the

735 same, including FM.23 and FM.24. Therefore, in this approach, the variations between the

736 rankings due to the different φ values are high. This means that the selection of φ value to make

737 a balance between the democratic and autocratic decision making style plays an important role in

738 critical analysis. As an example, φ value can make a clear tradeoff between senior DM and panel

739 of DMs when a DM feels that he/she has a low confidence level about his/her opinions.

740 The above analysis clearly illustrates that the developed method can prepare significant

741 information for assessors, the undertake system, and different responsible individuals in the risk

742 assessment system.

49
743 Table 9. Risk priority ranking by considering different resilience coefficient factors

Failure Priority ranking

modes φ=0 φ = 0.1 φ = 0.2 φ = 0.3 φ = 0.4 φ = 0.6 φ = 0.7 φ = 0.8 φ = 0.9 φ=1
FM.1 9 15 15 15 15 15 13 12 14 14
FM.2 4 6 9 10 9 5 4 3 4 8
FM.3 5 10 10 9 10 10 10 9 8 7
FM.4 16 12 12 12 12 11 11 10 10 12
FM.5 8 11 7 6 8 6 6 6 5 4
FM.6 15 16 17 17 16 18 16 16 16 16
FM.7 11 13 14 14 14 14 15 15 15 18
FM.8 2 5 4 4 3 3 3 2 3 3
FM.9 21 17 16 16 18 17 19 18 18 17
FM.10 14 18 18 18 17 12 12 11 12 13
FM.11 18 22 22 22 22 19 20 19 19 22
FM.12 7 9 8 7 5 4 5 4 6 5
FM.13 10 4 5 3 4 8 8 13 11 9
FM.14 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 5 2 2
FM.15 12 7 11 11 11 16 17 21 20 23
FM.16 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
FM.17 6 3 3 5 6 9 9 8 7 10
FM.18 22 21 21 21 21 22 22 22 22 21
FM.19 20 20 20 20 20 21 21 21 21 19
FM.20 13 8 6 8 7 7 7 7 9 6
FM.21 19 14 13 13 13 13 14 14 13 11
FM.22 17 19 19 19 19 20 18 17 17 15
FM.23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 23 24
FM.24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 22

50
744

745 Figure 8. Results of the ranking based on different resilience coefficient factors

746 3.2. Examining the validity of proposed approach

747 Regarding the study of Wang and Triantaphyllou (2008) and (Yazdi, 2019c; Yazdi et al., 2020)

748 the three following assessments are required to validate the proposed MCDM techniques.

749 Assessment 1: A reliable MCDM approach should not change the demonstration of best

750 alternative by substituting a non-optimal alternative with another worse one. In addition, this

751 replacement should be done without changing the relative importance of each decision criteria.

752 Assessment 2: A reliable MCDM approach should follow the transitivity feature.

753 Assessment 3: In a reliable MCDM approach, when a problem is broken down into smaller ones

754 by considering the same MCDM approach to alternative ranking, the combined alternative

755 ranking should be identical to the original alternative ranking of unbroken down problem. With

756 respect to our proposed method, the obtained RPN scores for all failure modes are dependent on

757 each other. Therefore, assessment 3 is applied using the proposed method on risk factors only.

51
758 3.2.1. Validity examination of IFBWM-DA approach for FMEA using assessment 1

759 In order to validate the introduced IFBWM-DA approach using assessment 1, a non-optimal

760 failure mode (FM.15) is changed with the worst failure mode as (FM*.15). assuming that the

761 senior DM and junior DMs panel express their assessments of FM*.15 with respect to each risk

762 factors once again. By applying the same computation procedure of the introduced IFBWM-DA

763 approach, the corresponding priority is . 16 ≻ . 14 ≻ . 8 still indicates the highest risk

764 level. Thus, it is concluded that the introduced IFBWM-DA approach for FMEA cannot change

765 the indication of the optimal alternatives when substituting a non-optimal alternative with a

766 worse one. As a result, the IFBWM-DA approach for FMEA is valid with respect to assessment

767 1. Therefore, these results illustrate that the similar inference for other non-optimal failure modes

768 include . 7, . 10, and . 19.

769 3.2.2. Validity examination of IFBWM-DA approach for FMEA using assessment 2 and 3

770 In order to validate the introduced IFBWM-DA approach using assessments 2 and 3, the original

771 MCDM is broken down into four smaller problems as follows:

772 {FM.1, FM.3, FM.4, FM.5, FM.6, FM.7}, {FM.2, FM.9, FM.10, FM.11, FM.12, FM.13},

773 {FM.8, FM.15, FM.16, FM.17, FM.18, FM.19}, and {FM.14, FM.20, FM.21, FM.22, FM.23,

774 FM.24}. Following the same procedure of the proposed approach, the related priority of failure

775 modes are designated by gathering the ranking of failure modes of sub-problems, the final

776 priorities are (FM.5≻ FM.4≻ FM.3≻ FM.7≻ FM.5≻ FM.6), (FM.12≻ FM.13≻ FM.2≻ FM.9≻

777 FM.10≻ FM.11), (FM.16≻ FM.8≻ FM.17≻ FM.15≻ FM.19≻FM.22), and (FM.14≻ FM.20≻

778 FM.21≻FM.22≻ FM.23≻ FM.24) still . 16 ≻ . 14 ≻ . 8 meaning it is identical to the

52
779 original ranking of the un-broken down problem and clearly illustrates the transitive feature.

780 Thus, the introduced IFBWM-DA approach for FMEA is valid under assessments 2 and 3.

781 5. Conclusion

782 In this paper, a novel IFBWM-DA model, which is appropriate for dealing with the MCDM

783 problem of prioritizing failure modes in FMEA technique under uncertain conditions, is

784 introduced. Firstly, this study develops a new framework of hierarchical decision making in

785 which the senior DM as well as DMs panel (a group of experts or consultants) relatively measure

786 the importance weight of the identified criteria and alternatives. Secondly, the collective DMs’

787 expressions are fused into the IFPNs and by taking the merits of mathematical modeling

788 approach a model is introduced to rank the criteria and alternatives. Finally, a new algorithm is

789 proposed for consistency checking and automatically repairing inconsistent situations up to an

790 acceptable level. Finally, the real life application of the developed methodology is presented

791 using a case study of supercritical water gasification to prioritize identified failure modes.

792 The features of IFBWM-DA model make itself flexible and remarkable in applications. The

793 main merits of the IFBWM-DA are classified as follows:

794 • This model can satisfy both autocratic and democratic decision making styles which is

795 much more realistic in risk assessment procedure as a decision making problem.

796 • The weights obtained by the model are reliable, since the method has been developed

797 based on the concept of consistent IFPNs, the DMs can select freely those definitions and

798 models, and in case of inconsistency it can be improved automatically.

53
799 • The example illustrated in this paper clearly shows that the IFBWM-DA model is not

800 only simple in computations but also has enough capability of implementation using

801 computer programs such as math software.

802 • The results in this presented example show that the risk priorities obtained by the

803 proposed model have high superiority compared to conventional FMEA technique.

804 Moreover, the proposed approach can prepare a valuable and efficient decision making

805 tool in risk management field.

806 • In uncertain conditions, this study and some papers in literature describe the fuzzy

807 extensions of BWM. Hesitant fuzzy number illustrates the appropriate performance in

808 expressing uncertain information by engaging a set of possible values to categorize the

809 membership and non-membership degree. According to these combinations, future

810 research should concentrate on using fuzzy extension of BWM.

811 During this study however, some significant challenges have arisen that are essential to

812 investigate and which could be expanded as directions for further studies. In this paper we

813 studied the possibility type of uncertainty whereas it can also be applied for uncertain judgment

814 of DMs with consideration of other types of uncertainties as probability, plausibility, and

815 credibility. In addition, the subjective Intuitionistic fuzzy preference determining method

816 adopted in this study is completely dependent on DMs’ expertise level, which make the risk

817 analysis results deviate. The combination of subjectivity with objectivity can thus deal with this

818 situation. To improve the accuracy of result BWM can be improved using Pythagorean fuzzy set

819 (Yager, 2014; Yazdi, 2019d) and Bayesian prospective (Mohammadi and Rezaei, 2019; Yazdi,

820 2019e; Yazdi et al., 2019a).

821 Reference

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827 Adar, E., Ince, M., Karatop, B., Bilgili, M.S., 2017. The risk analysis by failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA)
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Highlights:
• This paper proposed a novel hybrid model for failure mode and effect analysis.
• A novel method is proposed based on group and individual decisions supported on
intuitionistic fuzzy BWM.
• The method enables trade-off between both democratic and autocratic decision-making
styles.
• A Supercritical water gasification (SCWG) system is considered as a case study to
illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Declaration of interests

☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships
that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

☐The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered
as potential competing interests: