On the basis of the literature review, it can be concluded that there is a need for appropriate maintenance policy;
otherwise it can be disadvantageous to the manufacturing firm. To select such a maintenance policy, an MCDM
approach is required, and this should address the problem with crisp data, fuzzy numbers, and linguistic terms.
By considering all the above factors, research has been carried out on the selection of maintenance policy on the
basis of several selection criteria. The novelty of the research is that it is considered as a strategic decision because
the selection has been made at the plant or organisation level instead of the equipment level. Simultaneously, a
distance-based fuzzy MCDM approach has been employed that enables decision-makers to use linguistic terms
while making qualitative assessments, and thus reduces their cognitive burden in the evaluation process. The
precisely defined criteria values and vaguely defined quantitative as well as qualitative criteria values are integrated
in the decision-making process. Hence, the proposed method provides the means for incorporating the economic
figure of merit as well as the strategic performance variables by allowing for consideration of both the crisp data and
the fuzzy data expressed by linguistic variables or triangular fuzzy numbers. The employed approach provides the
best maintenance policy and also the ranking of all the maintenance policies. The proposed approach is of great help
to the decision-maker for selecting appropriate alternatives according to their own constraints. A numerical example
is given to show the effectiveness of the algorithm and also to show the selection process for a maintenance policy in
a manufacturing firm.