Improving the Operational Efficiency of a Soft-drink Bottling Plant

Student Name: T. Nataraj

Different definitions and notions of operating efficiency were studied and then the factors affecting these efficiencies of the plant under study were narrowed down with a goal to improve upon their existing values. First the set-up time for the bottling operation was minimized using Integer Programming, yielding optimal bottling sequence of different flavors of soft-drinks. Next the performance of the production system was studied using simulation. Observations on relevant variables/processes pertaining to the production system were collected and appropriate parametric stochastic models were fitted for these variables, which were used for the simulation study. Finally a reliability analysis of the production line was carried out again through a simulation study. Distribution of time-to-failure and down-time after a failure due to six different failure modes, which act as competing risks on the production line, were empirically found to follow independent exponential distributions. Since analytical expressions for expected number of failures and down-times per week for each failure mode were hard to compute, these quantities were approximated using simulation and different operating efficiency indices were calculated using these figures, which helped in figuring out the key areas requiring serious attention for improving the reliability of the production line.