Abstract—The present paper aims to propose methodology to evaluate availability of beer manufacturing unit in a realistic environment and based upon the evaluation, propose a maintenance planning regarding maintenance of plant machinery. Paper discussed three stages of system: good working state, reduced state and failed state. Failure and repair rates are assumed to be constant. The mathematical modelling of system is carried out on basis of probabilistic approach using Markov Birth-death process. After drawing transition diagram for the system, differential equations are developed which are further solved recursively using normalising conditions in order to develop the performance model using steady state availability. After that availability matrix and plots of failure/repair rates of all subsystems are prepared to decide availability trends using different combinations of failure and repair rates. The critical subsystems are identified with the help of performance analysis in terms of various availability levels from availability matrix. The maintenance planning of identified critical subsystems are proposed in order to have maintenance scheduling. Finding of this paper might be helpful to plant management for futuristic maintenance decisions

Index Terms—Markov birth-death process, Availability, Reliability, Maintainability

Cite: Rahul Kumar, Pardeep Kumar, Nishant and Anuj Joshi, "Maintenance Strategy for Beer Manufacturing Plant," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 95-102, July 2014.