As the industry’s technology and priorities evolve, so must the safety standards that guide them.
“(The standard) is a living document that will always remain current by understanding the forces around us and the elements that are changing from a regulatory standpoint as well as new technology, new best practices or new devices to reduce the risk effectively,” Mr. Brixey said.
The committee puts the standard through a rigorous review process to ensure that it is as up to date and relevant as possible.
“(The standard) changes with the necessity of the requirements of the industry,” Mr. Domenicucci pointed out. “Twenty years ago, there were no references in here for robotics because there weren’t any. Today, we have a reference for robotic safety. On an earlier revision, we removed the requirements for safety for bolting reels. We did that because we couldn’t find anyone alive who knew what a bolting reel was.”
This year, committee members hope to make the standard more user-friendly and accommodate the advantages online resources offer. Z50.1 currently provides equipment manufactures a standard to design equipment to make it safe to operate. It also offers some guidance and a reference to bakers about how to operate this equipment safely, but Mr. Anderson believes there is room for improvement.
“One of the things the committee is going to be working on is to provide relevant and improved guidance to the baker, the end user of the equipment,” he said. “We need to make certain that as a committee, we are clear about the direction we want to take the standard; are we going to focus more on the safe design of the equipment, or are we going to focus on the safe operating practices, or both? I think the current Z50.1 standard has some opportunities to improve that end-user guidance.”
A main priority involves making the standard easier to use. While equipment manufacturers use the document as a design guide, the standard serves more as a reference to bakers, not something they check every day. Mr. Brixey, who as recently as June was the director of engineering and maintenance optimization for Bimbo Bakeries USA, Horsham, Pa., explained that Z50 has made safety and sanitation more standard with equipment design.
“The fact is you don’t necessarily have to refer to the standard on a daily basis because the manufacturers of our equipment, the way we’ve installed our equipment and the way we maintain and sanitize the equipment have all benefitted from the standard as it’s matured over the many years it’s existed,” he said. “It’s almost something you take for granted because of the way our industry has evolved.”
Mr. Hipenbecker believes the revised standard could be easier to navigate.
“People need to understand that not every section applies to every piece of equipment,” he said. “It needs to be organized in a way so that people can find what they need to know about a certain piece of equipment easily and quickly.”
Mr. Domenicucci suggested that many of the revisions will be smaller this time around but can help streamline the standard and make it more useful to bakers. For example, ensuring that equipment suppliers supply operating instructions to operators, maintenance and sanitation personnel. This could also be updated to include the industry’s move toward on-line manuals and training documents
Both worker and food safety have been at the forefront of the industry’s mindset for a while with the debate and rollout of the Food Safety Modernization Act. There are many standards floating around from different organizations. While the Z50 Safety & Sanitation Standards are the only ones that address bakery equipment and production specifically, there are others that apply to the industry, such as building codes, explosion-proof guidelines, electrical code standards and others. While the Z50 document should reference those standards, it doesn’t need to replace them.
“We need to make sure that this standard isn’t contradicting others,” Mr. Hipenbecker said. “We shouldn’t try to rewrite them.”
Whatever revisions the committee makes to the Z50.1 standard will continue to protect the safety of those operating bakery equipment.
“The standard is a guiding principle,” Mr. Brixey said. “It continues to evolve, and our equipment and our industry at large has benefitted. It is the backbone that has kept our processing lines and equipment food safe and people safe.”
