Dairy Processing -March/April 2022 - 49

" Without proper sanitation and sanitary design, you risk
the potential for a recall or loss of product due to quality. "
Matt Szewczyk, director of corporate accounts, PSSI Chemical Innovations
to be able to prove sanitation processes were taking place three
months earlier, for example.
Another concern Sani-Matic hears from dairy processors
is how to go about making sure machinery for cleaning is
running the way it is supposed to. Downer said " nine times
out of 10 " a problem isn't discovered until after the fact. So
more processors are seeking life of ownership support.
A third case in point of common dairy processor sanitation
issues, he said, involves the actual cleaning. Some equipment
isn't cleaned in place, and sometimes that hardware can be
damaged during transportation or cleaning, which can be an
invasive process.
Answers to all three of those problem areas exist, though,
Downer said.
The biggest issue with electronic record keeping - SaniMatic
offers a cloud-based version - is that a lot of plants don't
have the IT infrastructure in place, he said. Within the last five
years, though, such systems have become more economical
and less intrusive to implement, he added. Once in place,
companies can access data from multiple plants directly on a
mobile device if so desired.
To keep machines functioning precisely, Downer
recommended that dairy processors buy equipment from a
company that can come out to a plant once a year or every
two years to make sure machines are running properly.
As far as the accidental damaging of parts during sanitation
goes, that's something Sani-Matic has worked on for quite
some time. Downer said the damage usually comes during the
transporting. For example, parts might need to be put into a bin
and dragged across a room, where they're then dumped into
a space for cleaning. He said his company and others offer
a cleaning device that has a rack with spots designated
for hanging specific parts. The parts never leave the rack as
they're rolled to the washer and back.
" That's what we found is probably the most
effective, because you can't avoid taking the
machine apart, " Downer said. " You can't clean it
effectively there in place. But what you need to
do is have something that's protecting the part,
holding the part while it's being transported.
cleaned and then transported again. "
Clean-In-Place (CIP) systems are automated systems
used to clean the interior surfaces of food
and beverage process pipes, processing vessels,
tanks, spiral freezers, mixers, blenders, homogenizers,
roasters and associated fittings, without
disassembling the process.
DAIRYPROCESSING.COM | MAR-APR 2022 49
FUTURE OF SANITATION
Collaboration and partnership are key to advancing food
safety, Szewczyk said.
" It is important to work with a team of experts in all areas
of plant production, such as engineering, technology, chemical
expertise and sanitation to help enhance the overall function
of the facility to ensure product quality, " he said, adding
that PSSI continually employs new products and methods,
as well as proven procedures and labor, to help mitigate
environmental concerns and protect partners' products.
In the future, Downer thinks a growing number of plants
will be built around automation. Additionally, he foresees
some decentralization within the industry, with the logistical
and transportation issues encountered within supply chains in
the past couple of years.
" We may go back to having a few plants that make that
product instead of one or two, " he said, explaining it can
become a systemic problem if just one plant is producing a
certain product.
And during the rest of this decade, Downer expects dairy
processors will continue to seek automation, trying to make
operations as automatic as possible.
With computers handling record keeping, a plant manager
can be at the mall with her or his kids and easily keep up with
what's going on.
" We just haven't adopted technology to the world we live
in as well as a lot of other industries have, " Downer said.
Sani-Matic
http://www.DAIRYPROCESSING.COM
Dairy Processing -March/April 2022

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