The hybrid MCDM model with the interval Type-2 fuzzy sets for the software failure analysis

Abstract

Evaluation and analysis of failures which occur in the products or services in different economic areas are an important task of operational management. Solution of this problem leads to the increase of product's/service's quality, but in the same time it also increases business processes effectiveness and business goal's realization. The treated problem is especially important in the information technologies domain. In this paper, the risk factors that may cause failures of the software are defined in compliance with the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) framework and they are assessed during the development and the maintenance phase. The relative importance of these risk factors and their values at the level of each identified failure are described by pre-defined linguistic terms which are modelled by the interval type-2 trapezoidal fuzzy numbers (IT2TrFNs). The weights vector is calculated by using the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) with interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The rank of failures is obtained by using the complex proportional assessment (COPRAS) method. The example with real life data is illustrated to demonstrate the potential and applicability of the adopted methods.