Risk Prioritization and Management in Gas Stations by using Fuzzy AHP and IPA Analysis

Abstract

Gasoline industry is the main pillar of Pakistan’s economy and is of immense importance. This industry is confronted by diverse risks which significantly affect its performance resulting in decreased economic contribution. On the other side, published literature merely analyzes this industry and suggests directions to improve it. Thus, this study is a kickoff step in this regard, and its purpose is to study the relationship between risk factors, importance, and performance of gasoline industry, which is based on questionnaire data collected from three districts, viz., Gujranwala, Gujrat and Sialkot of Punjab, Pakistan. In total, 159 completed questionnaires were collected having consistency ratio (CR) less than 0.1. Acquired stats were investigated using the latest techniques of multi-criteria decision making routines, viz., fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy AHP) and importance performance analysis (IPA) software Expert Choice 2000. Among the five main risk types faced by gasoline industry, transportation / tanker unloading (importance, 0.467: rank, 1) was the most, whereas, the least significant factor was miscellaneous category (importance, 0.049: rank, 5). Moreover, the most significant factor which showed high importance with high performance was driving carelessness / accidents (importance, 0.278; performance, 3.32), high importance with low performance was uncontrolled vapor released (importance, 0.087; performance, 2.53), low importance with low performance was fire / explosion (importance, 0.021; performance, 2.66) and low importance with high performance was overfill / crossover (importance, 0.027; performance, 4.11). Thus, this work identifies, prioritizes and highlights the areas where improvement is needed to encounter risk and increase quality function development of gas stations.