Just a quick question. How often do you clean your floors in production? I doubt it's every night unless it's just a sweep? Could you have a daily dry brush removal to remove gross debris from the tread and then clean the shoes on a less frequent basis? After all if the floors aren't being cleaned as often they will just be recontaminated immediately. Might also be worth doing some swabbing for pathogens of concern on the shoes to see if the frequency is justified?
We clean the production floors every night and sanitize them 2-3 times a week (when we're sanitizing equipment)
There are dedicated shoes for the production area that are kept in the facility and are put on by the production employees at the beginning of their shifts. These shoes (the soles at least) are sanitized in an acidified quat sanitizer at the end of the shift, and allowed to dry until the next shift (on stainless steel tubular racking).
We have a microbially clean facility, at least based on our swabbing results, and we produce a low-risk product. The reason I'm asking is that we've had auditors ask us about "how are you making sure you aren't contaminating the production area with traffic to and from break rooms and restrooms??"
If I have wet shoes, I have very real slip and fall hazards for the employees. A powdered/prilled sanitizer (I found a few, 200-400 PPM quat in powder or prills) is a very real chemical/foreign material hazard, being tracked through the plant. I guess I could haul out my data from swabbing and say "it's adequately controlled", but since a state inspector AND our FSSC-22000 auditor mentioned it, I think it would be a good idea to come up with a solution that makes everyone happy.