To say that food and beverage manufacturers face a challenging landscape is putting it mildly. They’re continuously asked to achieve higher productivity and reduce inefficiency; and oftentimes, they must accomplish this while grappling with significant labor constraints.

To fully protect their customers and their business, food and beverage manufactures need to adopt a strengthened approach to cleaning & sanitation that supports better food safety and better efficiency.

But to achieve this delicate balance, manufacturers need timely insights into their core cleaning & sanitation processes –– especially the clean in place (CIP) processes that keep their most essential equipment safe and productive. As things stand today, many cleaning & sanitation leaders lack the information needed to answer CIP’s most fundamental questions:

• Did I wash?
• Did I wash correctly?
• Did I wash optimally?

Source: Words at Work

Modern digital solutions can answer these questions by arming food and beverage leaders with accurate, real-time, actionable insights into their core operations. Let’s explore how by addressing each question on its own.

Did I wash?

Every food safety leader understands the importance of cleaning core equipment consistently based on the facility’s SSOPs. But in in practice, a number of factors can cast doubt on whether cleans are taking place as frequently as necessary.

Manual logging processes, for instance, aren’t tied to confirmation from the equipment itself, and are therefore vulnerable to human error. In periods of high employee turnover, processors need to be able to rely on objective, accurate tools independent of individual employee knowledge.

Digital monitoring tools provide irrefutable evidence that cleaning & sanitation procedures are being carried out on schedule and with sufficient frequency. Not only does this support better food safety and team accountability, it simplifies and strengthens compliance by creating a digital record of completed cleans.

Did I wash correctly?

Even in fairly advanced operations, it’s not uncommon for core cleaning & sanitation knowhow to be concentrated between a small team of veteran employees –– people that know their facility like the back of their hand.

The problem with this set up, however, is that it prevents institutional knowledge from being easily accessible to newer hires or members of other teams. In labor-constrained industries, this can translate into sloppy, incomplete, or improperly administered cleans that jeopardize the quality and food safety of product.

Digital solutions make it easy to 1) centralize institutional knowledge pertaining to cleaning & sanitation functions and 2) provide teams with step-by-step instructions for the proper completion of facility SSOPs. In conjunction with essential monitoring functions, this simplified approach to communicating and holding teams accountable for cleaning & sanitation drives more consistent food safety and product quality outcomes.

What’s more, digital monitoring solutions allow leadership to spot trends as they emerge and address them in real time. That way, in the event that a cleaning & sanitation issue is undermining equipment performance, facility leadership has the opportunity to remediate the problem before it leads to a costly long-term issue.

Did I wash optimally? 

To maintain their competitive advantage, food and beverage manufacturers are on a constant mission to uncover new ways of doing more with less. When it comes to cleaning & sanitation, that means ensuring that consistent food safety and product quality doesn’t come at the expense of production efficiency. Water, energy, chemistries, labor –– each of these resources presents an opportunity for costs to spiral out of control.

Digital monitoring solutions make it easier for food and beverage manufacturers to take control of their costs and drive facility-wide efficiencies. By identifying water and energy usage trends over time, digital monitoring tools can highlight areas for improvement across a number of different metrics –– efficiency, efficacy of cleans, product quality, etc. Some advanced tools can even sense when a certain chemical process is finished removing soils and use that information to (safely) hasten production schedules.

In other words, digital monitoring solutions offer food and beverage manufacturers a more proactive approach to food safety, quality assurance, and resource management. Instead of reacting to issues after they’ve ground operations to a halt (or resulted in batches of unusable product) facility leaders can get ahead of potential problems before they have the chance to meaningfully harm operations. And the benefits of this approach aren’t limited to risk management –– digital monitoring tools offer food and beverage manufacturers a route toward new, improved baseline standards for efficiency and food safety.

A digitally supported path to clean

Confusion is the enemy of efficacy. When food and beverage manufacturers find themselves unable to answer the above three questions with accuracy and confidence, they risk food safety events that put their customers (and their business) at risk.

Digital monitoring solutions enable an improved approach to cleaning & sanitation that vastly improves visibility into core processes and helps manufacturers drive better outcomes across the board. As they navigate the current landscape, manufacturers who embrace these solutions will be positioned to maintain the highest standards of food safety and quality assurance –– and drive better business while they’re doing it.