Industrial unavailability of the must elaboration stage at a brewery

Abstract

In this paper a study of the unavailability of the must elaboration stage at a brewery is carried out, keeping in mind the interruptions that occurred during the long sampling period of 20 months, divided in to five quarters. The objective is to detect the weak or critical points, the causes that originate them and the intensity of the risk to impact on them. It is introduced the analysis of the triad Reliability-Readiness-Maintenance. The study indicated two critical areas: reception and preparation of the raw material area and production area, prevails with the grain tower, the mixer-sedimentation and the must cooler as components of more incidence. The indicators of reliability demonstrated that the preventive maintenance is not executed and they reflect a growing tendency of failure occurrence in non-homogeneous Flow of Poisson pointing out to the mixer-sedimentation like a critical component inside the process. The unavailability analysis shown an incidence of 58 % of external factors, what indicates the necessity of a deep study, taking into consideration they are caused by external factors to the investigated system. The latest caused that they were lost 3 211, 75 hours in the analyzed period, among of them 1 863 hours for external unavailability and 1 349 hours for industrial unavailability. They were equivalents to 409 032 $/ month and 293 664 $/ month respectively and they were not gaining for external and industrial unavailability.