A Sub-Saharan African Airport Mechanical Equipment Failure Assessment Using Joint FMECA-GRA Method Based On Technical Process Efficiency

Abstract

This article establishes how airport ground equipment fails in operations to enhance failure prediction, reduce maintenance and costs. Airports are essential to enhance the economy of a developing country and these failures affect the efficiency of the airport system. Consequently, this paper deals with utilising the risk priority number of equipment failures to create ranks for selected airport ground equipment and study the performance of these equipment using the grey relational analysis. Three methods were established to evaluate the failures of five selected major equipment (elevators, travellator, escalator, baggage handling equipment and air-conditioners): the risk priority number (RPN), RPN with same weights and RPN with different weights for the risk factors. All the methods approved elevator 8, travellator 6, escalator 11, baggage handler 3 and air conditioner 9 as the best, indicating reduced risk factors from the equipment. The worst equipment approved by all the methods are elevator 2, baggage handler 6 and air-conditioner 7. However, while the RPN, and RPN (with an equal weight of risk factors) approve travellator 3 and escalator 9 as the worst equipment, a divergent choice of travellator 1 and escalator 5 is mapped RPN method with different weights for the risk factors as the worst equipment. This work contributes to the airport maintenance literature by applying three models to evaluate the failure of ground equipment in airports to identify equipment that should be given the utmost priority and those that warrant the least attention of the airport maintenance management.