Interval-valued availability framework for supplier selection based on component importance

The availability of ageing systems, particularly weapon systems within the Department of Defense, is of significant concern, as budgets tighten and system replacement is infeasible. This work addresses the selection of sole suppliers according to their ability to provide component parts that strengthen availability of the system. We extend a popular multi-criteria decision-making approach, Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to an Ideal Solution, by (i) considering the availability of individual components as the criteria in the decision problem and (ii) weighting those criteria according to the value of component importance measures while (iii) accounting for uncertainty in underlying reliability and maintainability parameters with interval numbers. An aircraft example illustrates the approach.