Rodrigo J P Ferreira

Federal University of Pernambuco | UFPE · Departamento de Engenharia de Produção

Identifying risks ensures that organizations systematically find out where potential losses may occur. A particular aspect is that risk events should reflect multiple perspectives of losses and be evaluated in different categories of risk at different levels. In this case, sorting risk events improves perception and helps decide how best to choo...

The use of hydrogen has been shown to be an efficient form of producing energy and meeting society's demands for energy. In this perspective, pipelines are known as the safest and most economical transportation mode for hydrogen. However, accidents in this type of structure lead to multiple consequences of losses such as those related to people, th...

Accidents in natural gas pipelines are a significant concern because of the potential catastrophic consequences for humans, the environment, and properties. To tackle this matter, risk-based maintenance approaches are used for decision-making to prioritize appropriate mitigation actions. However, selecting maintenance actions faces other organizati...

The energy systems are composed of several protection systems that have the function of isolating a fault and protect critical components. The necessity of providing maintenance of protection systems for substations and transmission networks is a challenge for maintenance managers because they schedule maintenance actions that have different conseq...

Different approaches to risk management in industrial facilities and of modes of transportation are found in the literature and have been applied in different contexts. This chapter discusses the contributions of sensitivity analysis and risk visualization in models that evaluate multidimensional risks models based on MAUT toward providing more con...

COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems worldwide under pressure. Thus, establish a triage protocol to support the allocation of resources is important to deal with this public health crisis. In this paper, a structured methodology to support the triage of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 patients has been proposed, based on the utilitarian princip...

Multidimensional risk assessment for natural gas pipelines has proved to be an efficient approach for companies to evaluate multiple risk perspectives and to determine different mitigation actions. Therefore, making decisions to ensure the system's best performance, taking into account safety issues, is a challenging task. This paper proposes a mul...

This paper puts forward a decision model for allocation of intensive care unit (ICU) beds under scarce resources in healthcare systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. The model is built upon a portfolio selection approach under the concepts of the Utility Theory. A binary integer optimization model is developed in order to find the best allocation fo...

The distribution of natural gas has become an operation of great concern because of the hazardous conditions. In these systems, accidents can trigger losses concerning the human, environmental, and financial dimensions. Because of conflicting objectives, multidimensional risk analysis is fundamental to supporting decisions on pipeline operations. H...

The expansion, maintenance, and optimization of pipeline systems that distribute natural gas are all essential to meet commercialization demands for various uses of natural gas. Therefore, these are some of the key-factors for this sector that must be attended in order to stimulate growth in investments and to enhance current activities. However, u...

Seeking technologies to embrace Industry 4.0 has been a challenge to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME). Lack of investments and knowledge on tools and system integration put SMEs in a difficult position regarding their supply chain. As the main mission of the Industrial Federation of Paraná State (Fiep), serving industries to promote competitivene...

In this paper, a utility-based multicriteria model is proposed to support the physicians to deal with an important medical decision-the screening decision problem-given the squeeze put on resources due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the COVID-19 emerged, the number of patients with an acute respiratory failure has increased in the health units. Th...

Flooding can be an unexpected event which causes high impacts on everyone in society. These can include loss of life, injuries, creating homelessness, as well as causing damage to properties, and disrupting commerce and public services. Hence, seeking to reduce disasters caused by flooding is a significant challenge for policymakers, technical prof...

The evaluation of multidimensional risk in natural gas pipelines is a topic of interest due to the possibility of human, environmental, and financial losses occurring. However, managing risks in pipeline systems might be a complex task due to the uncertainty inherent in the parameters of the model, being a factor that managers must take account. Th...

Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM/A) methods have been applied in many risk management contexts. This article aims to diagnose the state of the art and identify research directions of multicriteria models applied in risk management. A systematic literature review is structured in order to answer seven main research questions. The steps of the...

Multiobjective and Multicriteria Problems and Decision Models.- Multiobjective and Multicriteria Decision Processes and Methods.- Basic Concepts on Risk Analysis, Reliability and Maintenance.- Multidimensional Risk Analysis.- Preventive Maintenance Decisions.- Decision Making in Condition-Based Maintenance.- Decision on Maintenance Outsourcing.- Sp...

This article evaluates 186 papers, published between 1978 and 2013 in 16 representative scientific journals, related to maintenance and reliability problems that were tackled from a multi-criteria (MC) perspective. An overview and insights are presented. This study may be useful to researchers and others concerned with maintenance and reliability w...

This study proposes a model for managing spare parts in urban passenger bus transport companies so as to support maintenance planning decisions. Spare parts play a significant role in the assets of these companies because inappropriate management of these inventories can cause significant losses to the business. A multi-objective model based on NSG...

In this chapter, specific problems in risk, reliability and maintenance context are described, such as location of backup units, sequencing of maintenance activities, natural disasters, operation planning of a power system network, integrated production and maintenance scheduling, maintenance team sizing and reliability acceptance tests. This chapt...

Technological advances in equipment and the increase in process automation has led to the maintenance function having a role in business competitiveness. The contribution of preventive maintenance is discussed, as an important part of this function, with some emphasis on methods for planning replacement, in the sense of time interval of preventive...

The decision-making process for any organization may be a key factor for its success. Many decision problems have more than one objective that need to be dealt with simultaneously. This chapter introduces decision problems with multiple objectives, with a description of the basic elements needed to build decision models and focuses on multicriteria...

Man’s level of dependence on equipment is increasing. This degree of dependence requires high levels of availability, which has been changing the impact that disruption of these systems causes. For many systems, an interruption has consequences that go beyond the dimension of financial loss, thus justifying a multidimensional consequence approach b...

Redundancy allocation is a decision that involves assessing and choosing where to locate additional components or subassemblies, above the minimum required for an existing system to operate, in order to promote the system’s reliability. Specifically, the field of multi-objective redundancy allocation has received several contributions since the 197...

The design selection problem in the RRM context considers long-term performance, and represents higher additional costs if unforeseen features that should have been included during the project design phase had to be implemented afterwards. Design decision involves multiple aspects and may be more critical depending on the kind of item, such as cons...

An important issue related to maintenance management is the problem of sizing the amount of spare parts. An excess number of spare parts results in financial losses. However, a lack of spare parts is also negative, because this may result in a loss of production due to the increased downtime of equipment. Therefore, spare parts should be available...

An appropriate decision-making process is relevant for the strategic success of any organization. Most of the decision problems in these organizations have multiple objectives that have to be dealt with simultaneously. This chapter gives a brief description of a few multicriteria (MCDM; MCDA; MCDM/A) methods, including deterministic additive method...

Accidents involve critical consequences that require an appropriate and efficient form of risk management. A multidimensional risk analysis allows a broader view. MCDM/A approaches enable more consistent decision-making, taking into account the DM’s rationality (compensatory or non-compensatory), DM’s behavior regarding risk (prone, neutral or aver...

This chapter presents key aspects of multicriteria (MCDM/A) approaches for decisions on maintenance outsourcing regarding maintenance contract, which includes contract selection (e.g. repair contract) and supplier selection. Contract design is a multi-objective task that leads the maintenance manager (or decision maker - DM) to decide amongst a com...

This chapter presents multicriteria (MCDM/A) models to classify and assign maintenance priorities in order to allow maintenance planning to be more effective. From traditional maintenance planning techniques such as RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance), TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and others, a common aspect of these techniques is the defi...

Predictive maintenance modeling is a tool that can provide many benefits to the maintenance management area. This chapter suggests a multicriteria approach for modeling condition based maintenance decisions. Whereas the Predictive maintenance uses condition information of assets, the preventive maintenance is time-based only. This chapter discusses...

Given the competition scenario experienced by businesses and specifically with regard to to the challenges imposed by strict regulatory requirements, it is crucial that maintenance should contribute to the strategic objectives of a business. In this context this paper proposes a multi-criteria decision model to support maintenance planning, which w...

We observe that in an electrical substation there are issues that directly influence the need for maintenance actions to be adequate. Actually sometimes the maintenance policy is inappropriate due to the aging process of assets being evaluated incorrectly, as well as due to technological upgrades not being reflected in maintenance plans, and finall...

In several countries, electrical power distribution companies are in an environment controlled by government regulatory agencies. Various performance indicators were developed with the aim of ensuring the quality of service which is monitored by regulatory agencies. The profitability of companies is directly related to such goals. Two relevant dist...

Classical Mean-Variance (MV) model has been criticized and it is observed that the use of covariance has sensitivity to the parameter estimation. Thus, the present study set out to formulate a new matrix model, using Bayesian inference as a way to replace covariance in MV, called BMM – Bayesian Matrix Model. To evaluate the model, some hypotheses w...

In the context of complex equipment, inspection has an important role to play in maintaining operations at a suitable performance. In fact, for this kind of system, failures are not immediate. Therefore, the concept of delay time is very useful as a two-step failure process, as a basis for constructing inspection models. Another aspect worth notici...

This paper presents a real world application that lead to the construction of a decision support system built to support maintenance planning in an electrical power distribution company. The outcome of the DSS is to determine the order of priority in which potential failure repair orders should be conducted. This company-specific problem has been s...

A fundamental problem in finance is the choice of assets for investment. The first method developed to solve this problem was the mean and variance developed by Markowitz (1952a), the combination of these two factors result in reducing the risk. Despite the importance of their contribution, the method developed provides the initial purchase in lots...

The present study set out to formulate a new matrix model, using Bayesian inference as a means of estimation in order to replace historical covariance in MV models, called BMM – Bayesian Matrix Model. To evaluate the model, some hypotheses were analyzed using an ex post facto method and sensitivity analysis. Our results show that returns earned fro...

Facility location is a theory developed to support decisions about where to place strategic resources with low mobility. Determining the best location for a back-up transformer is a relevant example. Thus, this study set out to present a decision support system based on a multi-attribute p-median model. Some hypotheses were assumed through the Mult...

Different kinds of systems need different maintenance levels and models. Specifically, for systems producing services, we can observe the essential role of maintenance techniques. For these systems, failures have several negative implications, and the cost minimization model, frequently used in a manufacturing system, is not seen as efficient for m...

Deciding on where to place a back-up transformer is not an easy task. It involves factors that might be considered irrelevant or of little influence, but which in fact are extremely important and ensure the success of the location process. This procedure requires close attention to key criteria as well as careful planning and lengthy, widely-rangin...

In the maintenance planning context, the consequences of decisions are complex due to the intense presence of uncertainty in the events related to maintenance policies. Moreover, the impact of the consequences of maintenance on companies' competitiveness has become more critical. In order to make better maintenance decisions, operational research a...

This study presents one approach to investing in the financial markets using a decision theory point of view, where the main decision is to choose an investment portfolio, based on economic indexes, in order to predict future investments based on historical data, which minimizes the risk involved. The decision model is based on Decision Theory and...

In periodic monitoring, the main problem is determining the inspection interval of condition monitoring. For this problem, the decision variable is represented by the time of next inspection of condition monitoring. There are several studies that deal with prescribing inspection intervals. But only a few of these allow the decision maker to observe...

This paper presents a multicriteria approach for the determining the proper location for a back-up transformer. Criteria such as: public health, local industrialization, the population of the area, and the distance are considered. When these criteria are taken into consideration, the best location is that which generates the least loss in maximizin...

Este trabalho apresenta um sistema de apoio a decisão para o gerenciamento de projetos utilizando metodologia multicritério. O gerenciamento de projetos é um negócio caracterizado por falhas, geralmente ocasionado por incertezas e julgamentos incorretos das urgências do projeto. A maioria dos gerentes não focaliza sobre os aspectos críticos dos pro...

Reducing the logistics costs is a necessity, since, according to Novaes(2004), these represent 20% of the total costs of an organization. Determining routes is strategically important to distribution organizations. Thus, measuring the efficiency of the supply chain allows shortcomings to be visualized and solutions for problems to be generated. Con...

A multicriteria decision model for risk assessment and for risk ranking of sections of natural gas pipelines is proposed. The model is based on Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT). The reasons for a multicriteria approach for risk assessment are discussed. The model takes into account the assessment of human, environmental and financial dimension...