It’s crunch time for the sanitation crew. To drive revenue and boost throughput, bakeries are extending production runs and sometimes testing the limits on how long they can operate between scheduled downtime.

As a result, many sanitation departments are getting the short end of the broomstick.

Remember when direct-store-delivery bakeries regularly shut down their lines on Tuesdays and Saturdays for cleaning and maintenance? As five-day production weeks grow to six and seven, two days a week have become one day or even one shift for sanitation.

Often deep cleaning happens overnight or on weekends, which makes it more difficult to attract new high-performing hires to do the work. Such changes in attitudes are also altering the dynamics for bakery support departments.

“Gone are the days of dedicated sanitation crews,” said Karl Thorson, global food safety and sanitation manager, General Mills, Minneapolis. “We have some small crews that are doing environmental, peripheral-type cleaning, but most of the cleaning is being done by the operations team, and that gives us the ultimate flexibility. Gone are the days of a dedicated shift and team to clean. That just doesn’t happen as much. It still does in the big meat plants, but in our plants, we’ve got to be able to stop operations on any shift on any day to clean.”

Artisan bakeries with dozens of changeovers tend to struggle the most with downtime because they must rely on more frequent cleaning actions throughout the day. Bret Zaher, manager at AIB International, suggested that creative scheduling could bolster throughput for these operations.

“There is no easy way to boost production uptime while reducing sanitation time and resources,” he noted.

However, he added, there are several tricks of the trade. Some baking sites set up longer runs first, which leave the changeovers for last. Other plants run organic and other identity-preserved baked goods before conventional ones to reduce downtime caused by changeovers. Scheduling allergen production at the end of the week cuts cleaning time.

Some companies have installed smaller lines or satellite sites for shorter production runs that allow larger, more efficient lines to operate longer.

Typically, bakeries that freeze baked goods or manufacture products with an extended shelf life have more options, such as building inventory to extend capacity. Whether the bakery produces artisan bread or melba toast, Mr. Thorson recommended developing a cross-functional team that’s focused on food safety to explore every possible way to safely streamline sanitation. 

“We’ve got to have maintenance, engineering, operations, safety and logistics to focus on changeovers,” he said. “The best changeover we do is the one that we don’t have to do, so we need to challenge that matrix and say, ‘What if we scheduled differently? What is the cost of inventory versus the changeover? Instead of running that product every week, could we run it every two weeks?’ The criteria should be food safety as well as cleaning for human safety and for equipment reliability. You’ve got to start with the success criteria, being crystal clear with what those success criteria are, and then you can challenge the way to meet those success criteria.”

One way to improve efficiency is to share the load when it comes to sanitation.

“It’s important to stress that only ‘sanitation’ is the responsibility of the sanitation staffing,” said Nathan Mirdamadi, food safety manager, Commercial Food Sanitation, an Intralox company. “Cleaning and housekeeping are the responsibility of everyone, and a key piece is having a departmental ‘hand-off’ process, including documentation with clear expectations and accountability.”

Mr. Zaher pointed out that a bakery operates as an interconnected system.

“Sanitation can’t be properly executed without help from the production team, and maintenance needs the areas and equipment reasonably cleaned so they can do their job,” he said.

Mr. Thorson noted that bakers need to be mindful of how the actions of one department affect another.

“What if I’m allowed to run the line longer from a food safety and quality standpoint? How is that going to impact maintenance? Will we still have to take the line down because we’ve got to do preventive maintenance?” he asked. “It’s about bringing all the right parties together and really understanding how to standardize the program.”

Mr. Zaher offered a number of ways that production can help reduce sanitation time. Operators, for instance, can be instructed to remove all the ingredients, packaging and work-in-progress containers from the production area or scrape and remove much of the heavy debris off a production line. They can even assist by cleaning the pans or trays at the end of their shift.

“They could have two sets of utensils, containers and even portable equipment,” he said. “That way, the dirty set can be cleaned during the week and be ready for the switch during the down day. They can also install extra holding and mixing tanks so that they can switch back-and-forth during the week and clean one while the other is in use.”

Mr. Mirdamadi stressed that bakers must remain cognizant of safety risks when extending production runs.

“First and foremost, can the facility maintain sanitary conditions, including microbiologically? As part of that process, a risk assessment must be completed to understand if the product can support bacterial toxin development that can survive many kill steps,” he said. “Finally, especially in dry facilities, the control of dust and cleaning frequency can be a very important consideration for pest and combustible dust risks.”

With only so many hours in a day, longer production runs only mean less time for cleaning and sanitation. Bakeries need to get everyone involved and smartly coordinate scheduling to ensure they can maximize throughput while keeping their houses in order.

This article is an excerpt from the October 2023 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Sanitation, click here.