Evaluation of reliability, availability and maintainability of a milk production line

The application of statistical approaches of failure data for analysing the reliability, availability and maintainability of a milk production line were carried out. Descriptive statistics of the failure and repair data was computed and the best fitness indexes were determined. The parameters of some idealised probability distributions, such as Weibull, exponential, lognormal and normal distributions have been estimated. Reliability and maintainability (R%M) of workstation and the entire line at different mission times with their best-fit distribution have been estimated. Both R%M proved to be useful tools to assess the current situation, and to predict reliability, mainly in short term, for upgrading the operation management of the milk production line. It was pointed out that: a) the availability for the milk production line was 96.13% and the line was down or under repair for 3.9%; b) both bottling machine and heat exchanger/pasteuriser machine had 57.5% of all the failures that presented on the production line; c) there were no-trend and serial correlation for both failure and repair data. The records of failures and repairs can be a useful database for manufacturers of milk industry to design new reliable and safe equipment.