## 5 Comparison and Discussion  
### Comparison of the Proposed Method and the Conventional FMEA  
To demonstrate the efficacy of the suggested model, the conventional risk priority, the synthetized FMEA, and the FMEA-DEA have been applied in the given case study. Figure 7 contrasts the results of the conventional FMEA method and the proposed FMEA-DEA method in this study.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{6}{c}{**FMs with Increased Priority**} & \multicolumn{6}{c}{**FMs with Decreased Priority**} \\ \hline \begin{tabular}{c} **Failure** \\ **Modes** \\ \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{c} **Sum of the** \\ **Costs (USD)** \\ \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{c} **Sum of the** \\ **(Minutes)** \\ \end{tabular} & \begin{tabular}{c} **Sum of the** \\ **RPNs** \\ \end{tabular} & \
\begin{tabular}{c} **Failure** \\ **Mode** \\ \end{tabular} & **Cost (USD)** &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Time** \\ **(Minutes)** \\ \end{tabular} & **RPN** \\ \hline
31 and 17 & 70.5 & 92.5 & 39.84 & 35 & 101 & 95 & 31.563 \\
16 and 33 & 25.75 & 85 & 29.418 & 19 & 35.5 & 95 & 28.687 \\
1 and 24 & 36 & 132.5 & 42.911 & 36 & 96 & 155 & 20.985 \\
2, 5 and 22 & 25.75 & 147.5 & 32.479 & 34 & 260.5 & 500 & 22.52 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 5: Suggested replacements of some FMs that lost ranks.  
Figure 6: The ranks of the failure modes in the modified FMEA vs. the FMEA–DEA.  
From Figure 8, it can be seen that 21% of SFMs have similar priorities in both the conventional and FMEA-DEA methods, of which 12% had similar priorities in all three methods. Meanwhile, 79% of the SFMs had different priorities in the conventional FMEA and FMEA-DEA methods, of which 49% had similar priorities in the conventional and the synthetized FMEA methods but different priorities when DEA was applied; furthermore, 30% had different priorities in all the three methods. SFMs in category one maintained almost the same rank in all three methods. For example, \(FM_{40,1}\) and \(FM_{25,1}\), related to data transfer and encasement, respectively, are high-ranking. This is contrary to \(FM_{6,1}\), \(FM_{8,1}\), \(FM_{26,1}\), \(FM_{42,1}\), and \(FM_{43,1}\), which are related to the surrounding conditions of the tags and also the environmental impacts of the RFID parts. Thus, solving the former failures will decrease the probability of associated problems. Other examples are \(FM_{2,1}\) and \(FM_{17,1}\) (category 3), which had a minor priority in both FMEA methods but became high-ranking when efficiency was considered. This is because the former is related to simple reader settings, and the latter is related to duplicate identifiers, and this can be solved in a short timeframe with low expenses. On the contrary, \(FM_{18,1}\) and \(FM_{35,1}\) (category 4) are very risky but inefficient; the risk is related to the exposed tags, while the inefficiency is related to the tag antenna failure, and both require considerable expenses and time to make the users aware of the importance of protecting their labels and to repair the infinite small circuit in the latter. SFMs in categories five and six were high-ranking in terms of risk in both FMEA methods and strongly decreased their priorities in terms of efficiency. For instance, \(FM_{34,2}\) related to the electromagnetic field disturbance is risky but often not in control. Instead, we can decrease the distance between the tag and the reader and ensure that there is no obstacle such as liquid or metal, and the same time and cost can be spent solving \(FM_{22,1}\), which belongs to category three.