Create a “Closed Loop” to Ensure Quality

Scheduling is a logistics function. Sanitation must work with production and engineering to determine when equipment and areas are available. The necessary skilled manpower must be on-site to perform the tasks and have the plant ready for production on schedule.

The history of the sanitation tasks scheduled, performed and not performed is useful for several reasons. Including reasons work could not be completed provides the documentation needed for audits. The auditing department needs to know not only what work was done but what didn’t get done and why. Include all the team members who did the work and the time spent.

Reviewing the history takes the guesswork out of adjusting SSOPs. Over time, deficiencies in SSOPs will become apparent and require adjustments.

Reviewing the history will help determine what tasks must be added, intervals changed, or instructions modified. Along with adjustments, history is used for troubleshooting sanitation problems in areas that were previously not a problem.

The history will show, week to week, if all tasks were completed and by whom. If tasks were not done because of lack of downtime, it can be brought to production’s attention.

By reviewing the specific historic tasks, it can be determined whether there is an interval issue. Comparing the actual manpower with the forecast in the SSOPs will help justify budgeting requests.

Keeping in mind that forecasted time does not usually match actual time, the history’s actual times can be helpful in adjusting the SSOPs and budgeting. If the history is cross-referenced, it is useful for employee reviews. For example, if summed by staff member and equipment or area, completion ratios can be calculated for each employee.

Auditing

Food processing facilities require not only sanitation, but the checks and balances of auditing and validation. The main reasons are best practice, customer requirements and ethics.

It is a best practice to self-audit and conduct third-party audits of sanitation and records. Self-auditing gives plants the opportunity to review sanitation and always look for missing HACCP or possible contamination points. Never accept “We always did it that way” as good enough.

Customer requirements are the second main reason for auditing and validation. Most national and regional customers require facility audits. Audits can be done by a customer’s staff or third-party auditor.

The other main reason for auditing and validation is ethics. It is every food company’s duty to produce its product safely.

Self-auditing provides the method to set up your own validation program and minimize surprises during third-party audits.

Depending on the size of the plant, self-auditing typically is set up in levels. The levels provide documentation and support between each level of management in the QA/sanitation loop.

For most facilities, self-auditing is clearly defined in three levels. The first is intended to report back to the food safety team that performed the sanitation. This level of inspection is very detailed and may mimic the sanitation procedure in listing specific points on equipment and areas. In this case, a specific equipment or area is picked and the audit team effectively follows the SSOP in checking the sanitation. Items not on the SSOP can also be noted.

The next level of self-auditing is to inspect a production line or zone of a plant. The inspection team may rotate self-audits to cover the entire plant within a specific number of weeks.

The top level of self-audit is to inspect the entire plant the way a third-party auditor or customer would.

Based on the department functions or company standards, self-auditing can be handled by the QA department, the sanitation department or a team comprising members of different departments, including sanitation, production and engineering.