Performance Evaluation with a Z-number Data Envelopment Analysis: A Case Study of a Petrochemical Plant

Abstract

Petrochemical plants face several incidents and accidents throughout their cycle time. Integrated resilience engineering (IRE) can be used to control and reduce such incidents and accidents. In a petrochemical plant, it includes flexibility, self-organization, teamwork and fault-tolerant in addition to conventional RE indicators. This study proposes a Z-number data envelopment analysis (ZDEA) method for the performance evaluation of IRE. It deals with a deep uncertainty of the collected data to obtain better results. Data are collected through a standard questionnaire in a real petrochemical plant in Iran. The obtained results are verified and validated against a fuzzy data envelopment analysis (FDEA) method through 50 independent experiments. Perturbation and noise analysis are used to show the superiority and applicability of the proposed method. The results show the most important indicators through the sensitivity analysis are teamwork, management commitment and learning culture.