Addressing Uncertainty in Digital Risk Evaluation Using a Fuzzy-FMEA Methodology

Alongside with the four past revolutions that crowned the industrial field, and the innovative technologies that grows with the digitalization trend, manufacturing systems are becoming more complex especially in the automotive industry. Even though this evolution plays an important role in enhancing companies’ performance, they also present many risks to manage, which leads stakeholders to the need of implementing a strong strategy to assess risks such as Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). Nowadays, manufacturing flows confronts different types of variables continuously and dynamically interacting (social, environmental, financial, political, educational, cultural, etc.), leading to uncertainty in the decision-making approach, specifically during the ranking of a failure severity. Accordingly, this article explores how the latest version of FMEA (AIAG/VDA) approach can be strengthened through Fuzzy-logic to overcome uncertainty in judgments. It also presents a use case based on an RFID system implemented within an automotive company.