Reliability and maintainability analysis to improve the operation of the limoncello production line

Abstract

The reliability, maintainability, failure rate and repair rate models of a limoncello automated production line for a period of 8 months at machine and entire line level were carried out. It was pointed out that (i) the real operating time of the limoncello production line (LPL) is 89.35%, whereas for the rest 10.65%, the LPL is under repair, (ii) the Weibull distribution provided the best fit of the failure data for the LPL to describe the time-between-failures (TBFs), whereas the time-to-repairs (TTRs) are lognormal distributed, and (iii) the failure rate of the production line increases, implying that the current maintenance strategy is not adequate and must be improved. This particular methodology can also be utilised in the beverage industry sector by the machinery manufacturers and the manufacturers of bottled products to improve the design and operation management of the bottling production line.