RFID Sanitation Monitoring Meets Demands of Digitized World

RFID Improves Daily Testing

The newest advancement in ATP sanitation monitoring is the use of RFID technology, which typically involves two components: An antenna and RFID tags. The tags are passive, which means they give off no signal on their own. They simply reflect the RFID signal back to the instrument with their specific code, which is linked to the appropriate test site grouping. To keep from being a potential point of contamination, the RFID tags, which are about the size of a quarter, have been inserted into a 6-inch by 6-inch, brightly colored sign.

The user simply swipes the instrument near the tag and the site group is read automatically. From there, the instrument picks test sites within the site group automatically at random. And if the facility has chosen to designate some test sites as mandatory, meaning they’re “hot spots” or sites that need to be tested each time, those are presented first and appear in red on the instrument’s display.

“The RFID technology is the ‘wow’ factor of the newest ATP systems. We’ve tried to move the design of the day’s test plan from the manager’s computer to the instrument,” says Soule. “In the past, you would have to create a daily test plan on a computer and upload it to the instrument, then toggle and scroll, and toggle and scroll some more to get to the appropriate test site before you could test the site—for every site you tested. We’ve eliminated all that. With just one swipe, the instrument can be ready to test.”

Analyzing and Interpreting Test Data

Not only have the latest ATP sanitation monitoring systems greatly improved upon the creation of test plans and the actual testing, but the analyzing of the collected data has seen numerous advancements since ATP technology was first used.

“We are in the information age and it’s really about how or what we do with the information that is important. Whether that information is used to comply with the seemingly endless global food safety regulatory initiatives, or simply finding a way to better produce your products,” says Soule. “The goal is to make sense of the data that is collected. Data collected through an ATP program is meaningless unless it can be interpreted, and used to help modify sanitation programs to produce unerringly effective results—the ultimate goal of sanitation efforts.”

The newest ATP sanitation monitoring systems can easily produce results that display:

• Results by test sites,
• Results by test site groups,
• Results ranked by highest percentage of fails,
• Results by date ranges, and
• Trends by monthly averages.

“We’ve even been able to automate the selection of which test sites should or should not be designated as mandatory,” says Soule. “The software has a filter for the manager to enter some predetermined criteria, such as a test site failing more than 20 percent of the time in the past 60 days, and then highlights those test sites that have met the criteria in red and places a check-mark in the ‘mandatory’ column. The other side of that is a facility for removing test sites that have met certain criteria, such as having passed each time in the past 90 days, from the mandatory designation.

“I have worked with sanitation supervisors who thought some areas in their facilities were the highest risk control points, but repeatedly testing showed otherwise,” Soule adds. “Seeing test site results presented in a concise manner can make it very easy to see which test sites are actually giving the sanitation crews the most trouble. Many times, it’s not as obvious as some may think. With the latest generation of software, a supervisor can easily adapt his facility’s sanitation plan, if it is ever needed, to reflect those evolving test results. It may be what he thought should be a mandatory daily test site can be tested on a random basis, or vice versa.”