Failure mode and effect analysis using multi-linguistic terms and Dempster–Shafer evidence theory

Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is a useful technique to identify and quantify potential failures. FMEA determines a potential failure mode by evaluating risk factors. In recent years, there are many works improving FMEA by allowing multiple experts to use linguistic term sets to evaluate risk factors. However, it is important to design a framework that can consider both the weight of risk factors and the weight of the experts. In addition, managing conflicts among experts is also an urgent problem to be addressed. In this paper, we proposed an FMEA model based on multi-granularity linguistic terms and the Dempster–Shafer evidence theory. On the other hand, the weights for both experts and risk factors are taken into consideration. The weights are computed objectively and subjectively to ensure the reasonability. Further, we apply our method to an emergency department case, which shows the effectiveness of the method.