Identifying and Ranking the Criteria of Outsourcing Capabilities of Maintenance Activities and Analyzing the Profitability of Outsourcing Using Bayesian BWM

Outsourcing of corporate activities by suppliers has long been done in the oil and gas industry. Outsourcing is known as a tool to gain strategic advantages. Outsourcing maintenance is also a common practice in many industries, including producing chemicals, petroleum, petrochemicals, and medical equipment. However, this process involves many risks, with their extent and nature still unclear. There are strong reasons for outsourcing some of the most important economic concepts. Determining the effective indicators in this selection and the importance and priority of each of them has always been the subject of intense research. In this paper, we examined the effects of these variables and assessed their relationship with decision-making outsourcing maintenance at gas refineries. First, the effective variables were identified by reviewing the literature and based on experts’ opinions. Next, it was tried to prioritize the indicators identified from previous studies using the relatively new Bayesian Best-Worst method (BWM). The results are then compared using one of the most recent decision-making methods, i.e., the Ordinal Priority Approach. Comparing the results of these two models shows that in both models, the cost of technology modernization and upgrades, the cost of emergency repairs and production stops, the cost of depreciation of equipment and machinery, and the cost of major repairs are the top four significant criteria among all the examined ones. However, the first and second methods consider “cost of maintenance” and “cost of productivity” more significant, respectively. It is worth noting that other differences were also identified in this study.