Glass breakage

Right now writing our new Glass-procedure and has come into question how to handle glass-breakage in the office (never happened in my 7 years in this firm). But several employees moves from this office and round the production.
Any sugestions?

Right now writing our new Glass-procedure and has come into question how to handle glass-breakage in the office (never happened in my 7 years in this firm). But several employees moves from this office and round the production.
Any sugestions?

I would think the easiest way would be to treat it similar to what you do in production (minus the product disposition).

• Isolate the area
• Clean it up
• Inspect area (and people, don't forget shoes and cuffs!)

It may not be as critical as a production area but if people are going back and forth from office to production they could carry glass with them.

Dear Connyh,

You don't mention yr profession but some industries do at least 2 steps -

1. It is not permitted to have a direct access from a conventional office into a production area, ie no doors ! Plus control with respect to changing shoes / clothing.

2. In the event of any specialised rooms within / adjoining production areas, no glass is allowed as per usual production rules.

Prevention is better than cure ?

Rgds / Charles.C

I think I understand what you mean. In low risk areas in all food industry I've ever worked in the UK, you don't have to change your shoes on moving from an office area to the production area and it would perhaps be ridiculous to expect it. I agree, just put in the same procedure as you would in production minus disposing of the product, ie, you should have specific glass clearance kits (I normally have tubs which I put cleaning equipment, the instruction, a records sheet and some hold labels in). Someone named should be responsible for cleaning up the glass and ensuring all of it is there (normally a QA). Then peoples shoes should be inspected and if there is any doubt, cleaned or changed.

I had this in place in one place I worked in and, indeed had a "no glass to be brought on site" rule.

Dear all,

How about cleaning or replacing any document that is in the office involved and is supposed to be taken into production (food handling) area?
e.g work orders, picking orders, packing labels, etc.

Thankey for all answers. I´m in the fish-industry and between production and office is 2 rooms - no direct admittance.

I wondered if ...
the employee at the office didn`t get all small glassfragments off the clothes - when she walked around the risc of "wasting" some glass on the floor which then might be brought in the production. It isn´t unlikely that the risk would result in harmful product but....

Dear Connyh,

From my experience in (wet) fish industry, it is a recommended and routine practice to implement a comprehensive system to block external contamination entering the production area, eg change of footwear, footbaths for general contamination, L.mono etc, use of over-garments. Last time I was in Scandinavia the cooked shrimp factory I was auditing had very impressive one-time usable, paper overcoats for guests, never seen that elsewhere. IMEX, people like BRC are usually quite hot on these types of controls. However, it is also true that I hv seen other (certified) establishments in Europe and Asia with much less rigorous protections, particularly for non-RTE products.

I also suspect these kinds of screenings are probably unreal when compared to factories like packaging manufacturers. Few of the plastic, board manufacturers I hv seen had anything like the above but were nonetheless happily certified to ISO 9001 and were supplying food packaging for name brand customers. I occasionally got the feeling from the responses in some of these establishments that I had been classified as an extraterrestrial nuisance.

With respect to yr original question, i suppose it might depend on the magnitude of an incident in some external office but as long as proper prevention schemes are in use, I would hv thought the risk to the production is 'negligible"

Best Regards / Charles.C