Neutrosophic fuzzy goal programming approach in selective maintenance allocation of system reliability

Abstract Selective maintenance problem plays an essential role in reliability optimization decision-making problems. Systems are a configuration of several components, and there are situations the system needs small intervals or break for maintenance actions, during the intervals expert carried out the maintenance actions to replace or repair the deteriorated components of the systems. Because of the uncertainty associated with the component’s operational time, failure, and next mission duration create a new challenge in determining optimal components allocation and evaluating future missions successfully. In this paper, a multi-objective selective maintenance allocation problem is formulated with fuzzy parameters under neutrosophic environment. A new defuzzification technique is introduced based on beta distribution to convert fuzzy parameters into crisp values. The neutrosophic goal programming technique is used to determine the compromise allocation of replaceable and repairable components based on the system reliability optimization. A numerical illustration is used to validate the model and ascertain its effectiveness. The result is compared with two other approaches and found to be better. The method is flexible and straightforward and can be solved using any available commercial packages. The extension of the concept can be useful to other complex system reliability optimization.