Application of a Cost-Driven Optimization Method in Beer Brewing Process

Abstract

The final quality and cost of a manufactured product are determined to a large extent by the engineering design of the product and its production process through activities of off-line quality control methods, namely, System Design, Parameter Design and Tolerance Design. However, in the context of most non-industrialized countries, the off-line quality activities of product design and system design of production process design stages are negligible if not absent. Thus, whatever quality control activities there are in these countries should be confined only to conducting parameter (robust) design of manufacturing process design and on-line quality control activities. Out of these two activities, Robust Design is the most economical method as it increases quality and/or reduces costs without imposing any further investment in factors of production. It is in this context that robust design as an optimization method has been used to improve the product quality of cleaning subprocess of beer brewing process of Behnoosh Company in which 358% improvement over the current condition has been achieved.