Cleaning and Sanitation

Cleaning and Sanitation

The purpose of a cleaning and sanitation program is to maintain product and product-contact surfaces in a clean and sanitary state and to ensure an overall clean and sanitary production environment. A Cleaning and Sanitation Program is essential to the production of a safe product. 

A cleaning and sanitation program includes the following controls and activities:

• Cleaning schedules and records to track required and completed cleaning activities
• Cleaning methods and procedures to ensure that cleaning tasks are adequately and consistently performed
• Control procedures and policies to control the proper use of cleaning agents and chemicals, and
• Inspection and testing activities to ensure that cleaning and sanitation is effective

As you can tell, a lot of planning will be necessary to ensure that the cleaning and sanitation program is effective. Planning decisions include choosing methods, frequencies, materials, cleaning agents, responsibilities, and record-keeping methods. Training will also need to be provided. And even once the program is planned out, it will require constant evaluation, modification, and improvement. 

Cleaning vs. Sanitization

What does it mean to clean something? The cleaning process is about removing soil to create a clean surface or area. Soil is any unwanted matter on the surface, or in the area, that needs to be removed. Soil can include, for example: 

• Product residue
• Residual detergents or chemicals, or
• Transient soil from workers
• Viable microorganisms
• Mold
• Airborne contamination, or
• Water

What does it mean to sanitize something? Sanitizing means to adequately treat a cleaned surface or area with an additional process to effectively destroy, or substantially reduce, vegetative cells of pathogens or other undesirable microorganisms.

Daily Cleaning Schedules

Daily cleaning will be required to maintain a clean and sanitary production environment. Daily cleaning involves those cleaning activities that occur at least once per day. This means it includes cleaning activities that may occur more than once per day, such as once per shift, or once per batch. 

Because these tasks are part of an established daily routine, they generally do not have to be recorded and signed off each time they are completed. However, the cleaning requirements and activities should still be well documented in a cleaning procedure or work instruction and the adequate performance of these activities should be verified from time to time. Many of the daily cleaning activities are verified as part of the pre-operations inspection. If the cleaning activity is a high-risk event, then, even though it is daily, it may still have to be recorded and signed-off. 

The Daily Cleaning Schedule is complemented with a Master Cleaning Schedule. A Master Cleaning Schedule tracks cleaning activities that occur infrequently, or less often than daily. We discuss the Master Cleaning Schedule more in another video. 

Master Cleaning Schedule

A Master Cleaning Schedule complements the Daily Cleaning Schedule. It tracks all other cleaning activities that occur less often than daily. As a result, the Master Cleaning Schedule tends to address such things as the cleaning of walls, ceilings, piping, equipment, structures, tools, containers, and grounds – all things which tend to require less frequent cleaning.

Unlike the Daily Cleaning Schedule, the Master Cleaning Schedule requires a record of completion and a sign off. The sign off may be performed by the person who completed the task or by a person who has confirmed that the task was completed, such as a supervisor or lead person, depending on circumstances. At the very least, the completion of the task must be traceable to the individual who performed the task, for accountability purposes. 

A master cleaning schedule generally includes the following information:

• The area to be cleaned
• The required frequency of the cleaning, and
• The person(s) responsible for the cleaning. 

Cleaning Area

A “cleaning area” is a general term used to describe whatever needs to be cleaned. This may include a specific piece of equipment, a floor, a wall, a tool, some process piping, or whatever. It may even include just a part of some equipment. For example, some things are so big in scope that the cleaning is more easily broken down into bite-size tasks to be performed over a long period of time. If that is the case, specify what the cleaning area is on your schedule, however big or small it is, and the appropriate frequency. 

Also, your cleaning area may be repeated more than once on your schedule, for example, you may need to schedule that area at one frequency for general cleaning, and at another frequency for deep cleaning. If that is the case, you may simply qualify your cleaning area by appending the word “general” or “deep” behind it so that you know which type of cleaning is required. 

Frequency

Frequencies of cleaning vary greatly depending on the circumstances, and range from a certain number of days a week to once a year.       

Good judgment and experience can go a long way in deciding the proper frequency. If in doubt, error on the side of too frequent. You can always reduce the frequency if, after your first few cycles, you can see that you are cleaning more frequently than is necessary. 

Sometimes the cleaning frequency will change throughout the year, depending on circumstances. For example, during humid months certain cleaning may have to be increased in frequency. Or, if you are running for more hours or increasing production volume, you may need to increase cleaning frequencies to adjust.   

If you are tempted to think that a particular cleaning area should only be cleaned “As needed,” then try to think of the Master Cleaning Schedule as a kind of tracker for how often you are going to inspect the area to see if it needs to be cleaned. At that set interval, clean it, whether it needs much cleaning or not, and then record your activities. Again, you can adjust frequencies according to your observations of how much cleaning was necessary. 

Here is a quick list of things to remember in your Master Cleaning Schedule:

Floors, Walls, Doors, Ceilings, Piping, Vents, Fans, Drains, Sinks, Hoses, Equipment, Tables, Light fixtures, Containers, Tools, Utensils, Carts, Pallets, Pallet Jacks, Forklifts

Cleaning Procedures

Cleaning should be consistent in practice and in results. To this end, cleaning procedures should be written in detail and applied the same way from person to person. Cleaning procedures also help for cleaning tasks that are performed irregularly, and that are easily forgotten otherwise. Also cleaning procedures are a helpful training tool. 

A well-written cleaning procedure should include:

• What is being cleaned
• Specific instructions on the method of cleaning, including:
  • What tools are needed
  • What chemicals to use
• How to mix or dilute the chemicals
• What personal protective equipment (PPE) is required
• Any other helpful information

When it comes to cleaning procedures, the instruction should be detailed enough for someone to complete the task by following the instructions exactly. A good practice is to test your procedure by giving it to someone who has never performed the task before, and see how they do, then modify the procedure accordingly. Also, the incorporation of photographs may be helpful.  

Cleaning Tools

A major risk in using a cleaning tool is that a tool may be used for multiple purposes and result in cross-contamination. For this reason, cleaning tools should have a designated purpose and be used only for that purpose. Because many cleaning tools are similar or identical in appearance, resulting in mix-ups, it a common practice to color-code cleaning tools for easy identification for its specified purpose. Where color-coding is used, the cleaning procedure should specify what tools to use by referencing the color code as well as the tool name and description. Tools are often designated for specific areas, such as: product contact surfaces, certain equipment, floors, and drains. The same cleaning tool should not be used for all of these areas or cross contamination will occur. 

Chemicals

As far as chemicals are concerned, there are generally two kinds: cleaning chemicals and sanitizing chemicals. The purpose of cleaning chemicals is to remove soil. The purpose of sanitizing chemicals is to kill microbes. 

When choosing chemicals — and cleaning and sanitization methods — I recommend consulting with your chemical provider, but here are a few basics. 

Cleaning Chemicals

The purpose of cleaning chemicals is to remove soil. Cleaning chemicals do this in various ways. For example, by:

• Softening the soil
• Penetrating the soil
• Displacing the soil, or
• Dispersing and suspending the soil, for easy removal.

Every situation calls for a unique cleaning solution. There are a number of factors to consider, including: 

Other factors include:

Again, I recommend consulting with your chemicals vendor, or other professionals in your choice of cleaning chemicals. 

Sanitizing / Anti-Microbial Chemicals

The purpose of sanitizing chemicals is to kill microbes. When cleaning we can see dirt and visually confirm that the cleaning is working. But when sanitizing, we cannot see the microbes. For this reason it is important to have the right chemicals, a validated sanitizing method, and something called “environmental monitoring” to ensure that the sanitizers are reducing microbes to safe levels.

We discuss microbial control and environmental monitoring more in other videos. 

Cleaning Methods

While there are many types of cleaning methods, we are going to only briefly discuss four categories of cleaning methods in this training. 

• Dry cleaning
• Wet cleaning
• Clean-in-place, and 
• Clean-out-of-place. 

All of these methods are generally used after loose soils have already been removed, such as by preliminary rinsing, scraping, vacuuming, brushing, or wiping.

Dry Cleaning

Dry cleaning is so named because it does not employ any liquids as part of the cleaning process. Dry cleaning methods include scraping, brushing, compressed air, sweeping, and vacuuming. For example, I used to work in a flour mill that used a lot of heavy equipment that created lots of dust and loose grain. We would brush off equipment, scrape down screens, and then blow down the facility with compressed air, starting in the rafters and moving down the walls and equipment to the floor. Soon the air would clear and the floor would be entirely covered with dust, dirt, grime, and loose grain. Then we would sweep and vacuum the floor until the facility was finally clean. 

As you can imagine, this dry cleaning process involved a lot of dust. In dry cleaning environments such as flour mills where finely granular dust is present, there is a risk that a dust explosion could occur. Dust explosions occur when the following elements come together. 

• Dust becomes airborne in a sufficient concentration,
• While oxygen is present,
• In dry conditions,
• In a confined area,
• With an ignition source that ignites. 

If such conditions can exist in your facility, make plans to eliminate the chances of a dust explosion. 

Wet Cleaning

Wet cleaning is so named because it employs liquid cleaning agents as part of the cleaning process. Wet cleaning methods include the following:

• Spraying, which involves spraying hot water or steam onto equipment
• Soaking, which involves soaking an item with a hot solution for a period of time
• Foaming, which involves using a foam generator to apply a highly concentrated foam solution that will cling to the surface and prevent rapid drying.
• Gelling, which involves using gel instead of foam to, again, hold the concentrated solution to the surface for an extended period of time. Gels often hold longer than foams do.
• High-pressure washing, which involves spraying a cleaning compound at high pressures such that the force will remove the soil.  
• Cleaning-in-place (CIP), which involves running chemicals and rinse water through a piece of equipment to clean it without taking it apart, and 
• Cleaning-out-of-place (COP), which involves disassembly and the soaking or spraying of parts, using automated washers or basins, until the parts are clean.

Cleaning Inspections

When it comes to cleaning, as opposed to sanitizing, visual inspection is one way to determine whether the cleaning activities were effective. When it comes to sanitizing, something called environmental monitoring is required to determine whether the sanitization was effective because we can’t see with our eyes whether or not we successfully killed the targeted microorganisms. We discuss microbial control and environmental monitoring in another video. Right now we are going to discuss visual cleaning inspections. 

Visual inspections are conducted at planned intervals in accordance with your risk assessment. But for product-contact surfaces, inspections are typically conducted every time a product-contact surface is cleaned. A product-contact surface includes not only equipment surfaces, but also container and utensil surfaces that come into contact with the product. The inspection must be performed by someone other than the person who did the cleaning, and the inspection must be documented. As part of the documentation, a finding on effectiveness must be included, as well as whether any corrective actions were necessary such as re-cleaning or re-training.  

When performing a visual inspection, look for the following: 

• the Absence of any residue
• the Absence of any foreign remnants from brushes, rags, or other cleaning utensils 
• the Absence of any cleaning tools or chemicals left behind
• the Absence of damage to equipment or parts

Also, look for maintenance or engineering issues that may make cleaning more difficult, such as: 

• Cracks and crevices that collect soil and are difficult to clean
• Inaccessible areas that make cleaning more difficult
• Leaking lines or equipment
• Areas with frequent condensation
• Holes in walls or ceiling
• And so forth

If you find conditions that make cleaning less effective or efficient, then notify the relevant parties and correct the issue where possible. 

Competence & Training

A modern cleaning and sanitation program requires the full time attention of a skilled and well-trained individual. Such a person should have a thorough understanding of cleaning methods, equipment requirements, chemicals, microbiology, integrated pest management, and sanitary design. But the competence must go beyond this single individual. The cleaning program actually begins with production personnel, who are usually the ones performing the cleaning and continually removing soil and spillage throughout their shift, before it can accumulate and cause greater issues. Also, engineering and maintenance personnel are important to ensure that the facility remains in good, easy-to-clean condition. Once you have written your cleaning and sanitation program, and its supporting forms, instructions, schedules, and so forth, ensure that all relevant personnel are trained on its requirements.