Assessing the Robustness of a Factory Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Fuzzy Collaborative Intelligence Approach.

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the operations of factories worldwide. However, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on different factories is not the same. In other words, the robustness of factories to the COVID-19 pandemic varies. To explore this topic, this study proposes a fuzzy collaborative intelligence approach to assess the robustness of a factory to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the proposed methodology, first, a number of experts apply a fuzzy collaborative intelligence approach to jointly evaluate the relative priorities of factors that affect the robustness of a factory to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, based on the evaluated relative priorities, a fuzzy weighted average method is applied to assess the robustness of a factory to the COVID-19 pandemic. The assessment result can be compared with that of another factory using a fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution. The proposed methodology has been applied to assess the robustness of a wafer fabrication factory in Taiwan to the COVID-19 pandemic.