Decision–Making Tools Enabling Sustainable Maintenance Strategies of Naval Systems: A Comparison of Multi–Criteria Approaches

The present study proposes a multi-criteria approach for prioritizing failure modes in naval systems, with the aim of improving decision-making for sustainable maintenance strategies. It builds upon a previous conference paper that introduced a framework for failure modes prioritization in autonomous ship navigation systems. The analysis is conducted through two parallel paths. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was first independently applied to determine the relative importance of criteria and to produce a complete ranking of failure modes. Second, the AHP is combined with the ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalit´e I (ELECTRE I) method with the goal to integrate pairwise weighting with the outranking logic, thus obtaining an alternative prioritization. The criteria set includes both traditional Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) dimensions, which are Severity, Occurrence and Detection, and some additional ones that characterize the specific scenario, that are Economic Factor (EC), Sustainability Maintenance Strategies (SMS) and Management and Data Security (MDS). The first-ranked failure mode from AHP standalone analysis is compared with the top-ranked result of the integrated AHP+ELECTRE I approach to highlight analogies and discrepancies. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the robustness of the findings.