The quantitative analysis, including reliability and maintainability which are of the fundamental issues for the operation management of an automated peach production line, was developed. Descriptive statistics of all the failures at machine and line level were shown, and the most critical machines under failures according to several criteria were determined. The best fit of the failure data between the common theoretical distributions was found and the respective parameters were identified. Moreover, the reliability and hazard rate models for the entire production line were calculated. They both proved to be useful tools to assess the current situation, and to predict reliability, mainly in short term, for upgrading the operation management of the peach production line. It was pointed out that (a) the mean time-to-failure (TTF) is approximately 650 min whereas the mean time-to-repair (TTR) a failure amounts to approximately 70 min. (b) The failure times follow the logistic distribution whereas the repair times comply with the Weibull distribution, and (c) the repair rate of failure is increasing, thereby implying that the maintenance staff expertise increases with time. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.