The paper discusses a cattle feed plant consisting of various units, such as elevator, grinder, hopper, mixer, winch, palletiser, and screw conveyor. These units have been arranged in a series. Failure and repair rates of each machine are assumed to be constant. The mathematical model of a cattle feed plant has been developed using a birth-death Markov Process. The differential equations have been solved for the steady-state. The system performance has been studied for various availability levels for different combinations of failures and repair rates of the subsystems.

Recently, many researchers have discussed reliability and long run availability of various process industries using different techniques [1-8]. Kumar et al. [1] analyzed the availability of the washing system of a paper industry. Singh et al.[2,3] discussed the reliability and availability of systems in the fertilizer and sugar industries, while Singh and Mahajan [4] examined the reliability and long run availability of an utensils manufacturing plant using Laplace transforms. Gupta et al. [5] discussed the reliability, long-term availability and Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of the cement industry with the help of Runga-Kutta method. Kiureghian and Ditlevson [6] analyzed the availability, reliability and downtime of system with repairable components. In this paper, we have discussed the steady state availability of a cattle feed plant. The cattle feed plant operation involves the following steps: the elevator lifts the material and puts it into the grinder. The grinder grinds the raw material and then puts into the hopper. The hopper is used for the storage and cooling of material by the fans. Then the material is put into the mixer for proper mixing of certain additives in specified ratio. This mixture is then lifted by the winch and put into the palletiser. The palletiser allows the raw material to move forward and passes it through orifices, which give them a proper shape. Thus, the main task of the palletiser in a cattle feed plant is to give shape to the raw material. Finally, the screw conveyor carries the final product to the store where it is packed for the final delivery.

Science and Technology Journal, Cattle Feed Plant, Paper Industry, Optimal Maintenance Strategy, Maintenance Strategies, Decision Model, Differential Equations, Mean Time Between Failures, MTBF, Switch-over Devices, Grinder, Screw Conveyor.