Systemic analysis of a manufacturing process based on a small scale bakery

The main aim of the article is to present two new innovative concepts of reliability of a functioning manufacturing system in the process of making bread in small-scale bakeries. Reliability is understood as one of the representations of an operator acting on specific streams in time t_o to t. One of these represents the global reliability of a system as a function of parallel action of all the streams of the system in time t_o to t and is denoted as P_g^(t). The second representation of reliability is a scalar value, P_ss It shows a new function of global reliability of a manufacturing process as a product of system stream reliability. In order to plot the flow of the manufacturing process’s global reliability function, we need to perform detailed calculations, computations, and analysis of the differences of individual values in real time, as well as plan an algorithm of the flow of system streams. This needs a lot of effort, translating however, to a detailed picture of the process. In the analysed example, measurements and research revealed an important increase of the value of reliability in a transition from a traditional to a robotised bakery. The article also presents a new concept of the reliability of a technological process, based on the analysis of relations of elements of the following streams: energy, matter, information, time, and finances. It shows the method of specifying streams and the method for defining the reliability of important and supportive relations. Important relations between stream elements are defined as having the reliability value of one in time. Supportive relations bear the reliability within a continuum between zero and one. Important relations are designated based on research, experience, and knowledge. Stream systemic reliability P_ss is a scalar value, i.e. a number from the continuum between zero and one. The P_ss value characterises failure-free operation of the whole system. Its average value in the normative time t_n expresses the efficiency of the manufacturing system. The value P_ss is a quotient of the number of important relation and the sum of important and supportive relations. The formula for P_ss shows the method of optimising the process through the increasing of the number of important relations between the input stream components. The concept has been applied to study the efficiency of operation of a small-scale bakery. Systemic analysis of a bakery allows for important increase in the reliability of baking bread if robotisation has been implemented. The concept of systemic-stream reliability P_ss may be applied to analyse the efficiency of any technological process and optimisation of any manufacturing process.