Failure data analysis for preventive maintenance scheduling of a bottling company production system

Equipment breakdown adds to the cost of production and considerably affect the overall equipment efficiency in automated lines due to unplanned downtime. Preventive maintenance with appropriate actions has been considered to enhance products quality, equipment reliability and minimize the probability of system brake down or failure. To this end, this study conducted a reliability status of nine packaging facilities, from the perspective of existing failure data of production system in the Nigerian multinational bottling plant. Failure data of the production system were stratified and analyzed to achieve the failure interval of each of the facilities and the sub-systems. Stratification of failure data resulted to an established input format that fitted the Pareto chart analysis, Weibull Distributions and Reliability/Failure Time analysis.  The results showed that the facility with minimum value of reliability was filler machine. A standby filler system was therefore recommended in order to prevent unnecessary idleness of the other facilities especially when the production target is high.  The study concluded that, analysis of downtime in a production/manufacturing system assisted in predicting the likely failure interval and hence a preventive maintenance scheduled was proposed.