A Fuzzy AHP for Identification and Ranking the Implementation Obstacles of TPM (Case Study: Gas Industry of Iran)

Total Productive Maintenance or TPM is a philosophy to enhance an organization’s productivity and produce high quality goods by minimizing waste thereby reducing costs. TPM is designed to maximize equipment efficiency by determining an extensive productive maintenance system covering the whole life of theequipment, extending across all equipment-related fields and with participation of all employees from the top management to the shopfloor workers, to advance productive maintenance through voluntary small group activities (Tsuchiya 1992). Most of the automotive manufacturing industries are focusing on strict quality standards in their production process and implementing a quality program called TotalProductive Maintenance. With the fast development of the maintenance, it becomes critical to set up a TPM Evaluation criteria system. FuzzyAnalytic Hierarchy Process is a new multi-criteria evaluation method evolved from Saaty's AHP. So, this paper aimed to find out and rank the key factors and obstacles that affect success in TPM in Gas industry using fuzzy AHP approach, and give an evaluation method for TPM inorder to help researches and managers to determine the drawbacks and opportunities

Keywords:

Obstacles , Total productive maintenance (TPM) , Fuzzy sets , Fuzzy AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) , Gas Industry of Iran