Decision Support System for Butter Oil System of a Dairy Plant at NDRI
The IUP Journal of Science & Technology, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 63-71, March 2010
Posted: 25 Mar 2010
Date Written: March 18, 2010
Abstract
The paper discusses a decision support system for a butter oil unit of a dairy plant at the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI). The total plant is divided into many sections like milk marketing section, condensing and drying section, cheese and butter section, quality control section and packaging section. The plant comprises various mechanical systems working in series and parallel configuration. Failure and repair rates are assumed to be constant. The mathematical model of the butter oil unit has been developed using the Markov Birth-Death process. The differential equations have been developed on the basis of probabilistic approach using a transition diagram. These equations are further solved using normalizing conditions in order to develop the steady state availability, which is the measure of performance of a system concerned. The system performance has been further analyzed with the help of decision matrices. These matrices provide various availability levels for different combinations of failures and repair rates for various subsystems. Furthermore, the decision support system has also been developed based on decision matrices of butter oil system of a NDRI plant.
Keywords: Differential equations, Markov process, Steady state
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