Food production starts and ends with cleaning

In the food industry, the aim of cleaning is to transform a dirty factory into a clean production environment. Manufacturing activities cannot get underway until all the lights are green. There are no sub-levels of cleanliness; clean is clean, there is no in between. Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs) help you to achieve cleanliness.
 

SSOPs provide support in planning and execution of cleaning activities. They help you estimate how many people and which tools you need. They provide insight into where you could save time, e.g. by changing the order in which you do things, dividing up responsibilities or deploying production employees to remove waste at the end of a production run. SSOPs also help you to determine the total amount of downtime needed for cleaning and to schedule maintenance activities or pre-op checks. In other words, they can improve the efficiency of your entire process.

This is only possible with motivated employees with a staff that understands and correctly follows the procedures.
SSOPs are a good way of engaging employees and giving them ownership. Ask them to provide input and improve procedures; after all, they are the ones frequently doing that particular task, which makes them the experts.
Procedures ensure everyone knows what is expected of them, enabling your team to achieve a truly and effectively clean manufacturing plant. Time after time.

Every food industry employee makes a contribution to feeding families and, with that, protecting families, companies and each other. The importance of cleaning is often underestimated and underrated. Manufacturing and cleaning are inextricably linked; neither of them can function optimally without the other. Only when we work together, we can guarantee food-safe production.

Claudia Baenen works for Commercial Food Sanitation (an Intralox company)

www.commercialfoodsanitation.com