Assessment of operation management for beer packaging line based on field failure data: A case study

Reliability analysis for packaging of beer production over a period of 9-month was carried out. The most important failure modes were identified and the descriptive statistics at failure and machine level were calculated. Several theoretical distributions were applied and best fit of failure data was identified. The reliability and hazard rate models of the failure data were determined to provide an estimate of the current operation management (i.e. maintenance policy, training, spare parts) and improve the line efficiency. It was found out that (a) the availability of the beer filling/capping machine is 94.80%, (b) the failures due to mechanical and pneumatic causes amount to 57.1% of all the failures of the machine, (c) the time-between-failure (TBF) was drastically decreased thereby suggesting that the probability to fail increased and the current maintenance policy should be revised, and (d) the failure times follow the normal distribution whereas the times-to-repair (TTR) a failure comply with the logistic distribution. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved