© Copyright by International OCSCO World Press. All rights reserved. 2012 Research paper 7 VOLUME 51 ISSUE 1 March 2012 of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering Reliability estimation for manufacturing processes M. Kostina a, *, T. Karaulova a , J. Sahno a , M. Maleki b a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tallinn University of Technology, Ehitajate tee 5, Tallinn, Estonia b UNIDEMI, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal * Corresponding e-mail address: marina.pribytkova@gmail.com Received 11.01.2012; published in revised form 01.03.2012 Analysis and modelling ABSTRACT Purpose: of the current research is to develop a reliability assessment method with an extension of the existing ones and pooling them to a common framework. The system must identify the most unreliable parts of a production process and suggest the most efficient ways for the reliability improvement. Design/methodology/approach: FMEA is in the centre of the proposed framework,a reliability analysis type, the most widely used in enterprises. The current research suggests to extend the FMEA by introducing a classification of faults. In this procedure, Bayesian Belief Network is employed to analyze faults. Findings: An integrated modelling method based on a system modelling and complemented with a reliability evaluation mechanism has the capability to analyse and design manufacturing systems. The tool developed to analyse a production process, enables companies to analyse the process as a whole as well as its parts and achieve efficient prognosis for the production process reorganization. Research limitations/implications: The reliability analysis framework is developed for machinery manufacturing enterprises. Practical implications: The reliability assessment tool helps engineers quickly and with accurate estimate most unreliable places of production process and indicates ways of their elimination with great efficiency. Originality/value: Expansion of FMEA method, application of Bayesian Belief Network for process reliability estimation, usage of reliability estimation during production route creation. Keywords: Process reliability; Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA); Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) Reference to this paper should be given in the following way: M. Kostina, T. Karaulova, J. Sahno, M. Maleki, Reliability estimation for manufacturing processes, Journal of Achievements in Materials and Manufacturing Engineering 51/1 (2012) 7-13. 1. Introduction The globalisation of markets, growth of customers’ expectations, widening competition in all spheres of relation between the customer and the supplier are the factors which at present extort the quality exhibiting in the strategy of the enterprise. Quality in the competitive world means the necessity of fulfilment of commited and waited customer’s requirements who occupies the leading position on the market [1]. Quality of production process means reliable and sustainable process. Therefore the common objective of industrial enterprises is to increase the overall production reliability. In another words, they look for output maximization of their current resources, by reduction of wastes in equipment and process reliability. Equipment and process reliability jointly create reliable production. The system reliability assessment and prediction has become an increasingly important aspect of the process operating different 1. Introduction