Title: A practical approach for reliability and maintainability analysis of repairable systems: a case study of polypropylene production for food packaging applications

Authors: Panagiotis H. Tsarouhas

Addresses: Department of Supply Chain Management & Logistics, Technological Educational Institute of Central Macedonia, Kanellopoulou 2, 60100 Katerini, Hellas, Greece

Abstract: The polypropylene (PP) industry is an important branch of industry with rapid growth and prospects. The production process is complex and requires the continuous operation of the line without failure of equipment to avoid quality problems and maintain the performance of the system. In this study, reliability and maintainability analysis was conducted for PP industry by applying statistical techniques on field failure data. Data collection from the line and their analysis were valid over a long time of 12 months. It was found out that (a) the real operating time of the PP production line (PL) is 92.21%, whereas the rest 7.79% is under repair, (b) the line reliability can be improved if it is focused firstly on workstation auxiliary supplies (WS.8), and then on packing (WS.6), and (c) the maintainability can be improved on the reactor (WS.2), extruder (WS.5), and the entire production line as well.

Keywords: polypropylene production lines; reliability; maintainability; performance evaluation; field failure-repair data; repairable systems; case study; food packaging.

DOI: 10.1504/IJRS.2015.073133

International Journal of Reliability and Safety, 2015 Vol.9 No.4, pp.255 - 271

Received: 02 Sep 2014
Accepted: 24 Jul 2015
Published online: 20 Nov 2015 *

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