Analysis and Prioritization of Strategic Factors Affecting Sustainable Production Continuity Using an Advanced BWM-DEMATEL Approach

Abstract

In process industries, sustainable production continuity depends on preventing disruptions, limiting capacity losses, and sustaining reliable operation across strongly interdependent units. Despite extensive work on maintenance, reliability, human factors, and sustainability, few studies combine plant-level shutdown evidence with expert-based weighting and network influence analysis across human, organizational, technical-process, and environmental factors. This study developed and applied an integrated Pareto–Delphi–BWM–fuzzy DEMATEL framework at the Jajarm Alumina Complex. A 24-month dataset comprising 425 unplanned events was used to identify critical units; 24 initial factors were then screened to 15 final factors through two Delphi rounds with 18 experts using CVR, CVI, and Kendall’s coefficient of concordance. Factor importance was estimated using the Best–Worst Method, while fuzzy DEMATEL was used to map directional influence and cause–effect group positions. The four main critical units accounted for 56.94% of recorded events but 69.09% of total shutdown duration and 72.07% of lost production. Utility disruptions received the highest BWM weight (0.1091), and the technical-process and organizational dimensions together accounted for 74.80% of total importance. Management commitment to reliability had the largest positive D−R value (1.1900), identifying it as the strongest cause-group factor, whereas wear and failure of critical equipment was the most prominent and strongly effectgroup factor (D+R=2.7455; D−R=−1.2200). Integration of BWM and DEMATEL identified five main strategic levers: management commitment to reliability, maintenance planning, availability of spare parts and specialized personnel, process fluctuations and bauxite quality, and utility disruptions; inter-unit coordination emerged as a central hidden driver. Robustness checks showed a minimum leave-one-expert-out rank correlation of 0.993, and the cause–effect classification remained unchanged when the DEMATEL threshold varied by ±10%. These findings indicate that sustainable production continuity in alumina processing depends on coordinated technical reliability, maintenance planning, resource provision, process stability, utility management, and cross-functional coordination rather than on equipment repair alone.