Clothes for employees, wash yourself or outsource?
Hello
We're currently going through a FSSC 22000 sertification-process. At the moment we are looking at clothes for employees, and the surrounding system.
We have gotten prices from company who deliver a complete package, with clean clothes which are up to standard, and also handle washing of those clothes.
I am interested in hearing if any here have chosen to wash clothes themselfs, and how you proceeded if so.
I am also interested if anyone has litterature that is relevant to this subject.
KR GV
Hi Gard Valaker
It is good and common practice in Australia that company provide clean cloths to all people working in the production area. My recommendation is to engage a service provider which has ISO certification and known to provide this service to the food industry. This will resolve many problem for you.
kind regards
Dr Humaid Raza Khan
MD
Halal International Services
Australia
Hi, depending on what type of food production you are involved in, it could be very time consuming and in the long term expensive to launder your own garments. The considerations would include detergents used, the buying of enough garments to maintain stock for staff and how often you would have to replace them due to wear and tear, industrial type washing machine and dryer and space to carry out the task not to mention the water bill. Your laundry provider has their own accreditation which covers you as part of your due diligence regarding the provision of laundered garments for staff, this is gold when its audit time as you can show the auditor the contract and the suppliers audit information that you hold on them regarding certification etc which makes one less thing that you have to worry about.
A contractor would replace damaged garments and also change the sizing of garments as your workforce changes, I currently have 5 different sizes of overalls and another 2 sizes of coats I have a team of 20 who work 5 shifts a week, so a 100 plus sets a week, no way would I want to be washing those.
Hello
We're currently going through a FSSC 22000 sertification-process. At the moment we are looking at clothes for employees, and the surrounding system.
We have gotten prices from company who deliver a complete package, with clean clothes which are up to standard, and also handle washing of those clothes.
I am interested in hearing if any here have chosen to wash clothes themselfs, and how you proceeded if so.
I am also interested if anyone has litterature that is relevant to this subject.
KR GV
Hi KRGV,
Based on previous similar threads here, a typical problem is that, inter alia, FS Standards usually require do-it-yourself systems to validate that their procedure is microbiologically effective.
This requires $$.
For example here are BRC's details -
Laundering of protective clothing shall take place by an approved contracted or in-house laundry using defined criteria to validate the effectiveness of the laundering process. The laundry must operate procedures which ensure:
• adequate segregation between dirty and cleaned clothes
• effective cleaning of the protective clothing
• cleaned clothes are supplied protected from contamination until use (e.g. by the use of covers or bags).
Washing of protective clothing by the employee is exceptional but shall be acceptable where the protective clothing is to protect the employee from the products handled and the clothing is worn in enclosed product or low-risk areas only.
Perhaps fssc22000 is less demanding ?,
Hello
We're currently going through a FSSC 22000 sertification-process. At the moment we are looking at clothes for employees, and the surrounding system.
We have gotten prices from company who deliver a complete package, with clean clothes which are up to standard, and also handle washing of those clothes.
I am interested in hearing if any here have chosen to wash clothes themselfs, and how you proceeded if so.
I am also interested if anyone has litterature that is relevant to this subject.
KR GV
There is provision in some standards for self laundry but I don't recommend it. How are you going to ensure the staff actually do it let alone at the right temperature and not storing it in a bag with their peanut butter sandwiches?
Hello, and thanks for many replies.
As I stated in my original post, we have already been in contact with an ISO-certified provider of said services. In reality we have been in contact with several providers, all certified, and continued talks with two of them. The problem with this is the price / year they require to provide this service. During the sertification-process, if I were to choose the simple sollution at every point in the process, we would end up loosing money after the sertification-process is complete, and would not be able to keep producing products for more than a couple of years.
Its a ballpark estimate of around €80 000 / year.
To answer some of your questions, and hopefully you will play the ball back to me, this is the system I am thinking about setting up:
1. Dedicated laundry room within the plant, seperated from everything else.
2. Lockers in hallway outside of wardrobes, where the clean clothes is stored after washing.
3. Employees pick up clean shift of clothes, moves into wardrobe, changes and put their private clothes into their private lockers inside wardrobe.
4. After shift has ended, employees put used clothes into laundry bins standing in hallway outside of lockers.
5. Dedicated laundry-employee (who also has other cleaning jobs on the plant) will collect laundry bins every day, and wash clothes in laundry room. Fold them according to size, and put them back into lockers for clean clothes.
----
We would have to:
1. Regularly check clothes for micro / bacteria
2. Regularly check employees private lockers (but this last point we would anyway have to do, because of other rules in the FSSC sertification process. For example there is not allowed to store food in lockerrooms. There is not allowed to store any equipment from production in locker rooms. A problem we currently know we have.)
----
I am not finished with my calculations on this, but it seems to me that you can do this with under half the costs of using an ISO-certified washer. Probably closer to 1/3 or 1/4. I will show my calculations in this forum when I am complete.
Kind regards, Gard Valaker
Hello, and thanks for many replies.
As I stated in my original post, we have already been in contact with an ISO-certified provider of said services. In reality we have been in contact with several providers, all certified, and continued talks with two of them. The problem with this is the price / year they require to provide this service. During the sertification-process, if I were to choose the simple sollution at every point in the process, we would end up loosing money after the sertification-process is complete, and would not be able to keep producing products for more than a couple of years.
Its a ballpark estimate of around €80 000 / year.
To answer some of your questions, and hopefully you will play the ball back to me, this is the system I am thinking about setting up:
1. Dedicated laundry room within the plant, seperated from everything else.
2. Lockers in hallway outside of wardrobes, where the clean clothes is stored after washing.
3. Employees pick up clean shift of clothes, moves into wardrobe, changes and put their private clothes into their private lockers inside wardrobe.
4. After shift has ended, employees put used clothes into laundry bins standing in hallway outside of lockers.
5. Dedicated laundry-employee (who also has other cleaning jobs on the plant) will collect laundry bins every day, and wash clothes in laundry room. Fold them according to size, and put them back into lockers for clean clothes.
----
We would have to:
1. Regularly check clothes for micro / bacteria
2. Regularly check employees private lockers (but this last point we would anyway have to do, because of other rules in the FSSC sertification process. For example there is not allowed to store food in lockerrooms. There is not allowed to store any equipment from production in locker rooms. A problem we currently know we have.)
----
I am not finished with my calculations on this, but it seems to me that you can do this with under half the costs of using an ISO-certified washer. Probably closer to 1/3 or 1/4. I will show my calculations in this forum when I am complete.
Kind regards, Gard Valaker
(4a) Devise/Set up a validated washing system, eg minimum temperature/time process.
(4b) Monitor the Process
(4c) Drying
(4d) Bagging.
Do you have an in-house micro lab ?
Hello, and thanks for many replies.
As I stated in my original post, we have already been in contact with an ISO-certified provider of said services. In reality we have been in contact with several providers, all certified, and continued talks with two of them. The problem with this is the price / year they require to provide this service. During the sertification-process, if I were to choose the simple sollution at every point in the process, we would end up loosing money after the sertification-process is complete, and would not be able to keep producing products for more than a couple of years.
Its a ballpark estimate of around €80 000 / year.
To answer some of your questions, and hopefully you will play the ball back to me, this is the system I am thinking about setting up:
1. Dedicated laundry room within the plant, seperated from everything else.
2. Lockers in hallway outside of wardrobes, where the clean clothes is stored after washing.
3. Employees pick up clean shift of clothes, moves into wardrobe, changes and put their private clothes into their private lockers inside wardrobe.
4. After shift has ended, employees put used clothes into laundry bins standing in hallway outside of lockers.
5. Dedicated laundry-employee (who also has other cleaning jobs on the plant) will collect laundry bins every day, and wash clothes in laundry room. Fold them according to size, and put them back into lockers for clean clothes.
----
We would have to:
1. Regularly check clothes for micro / bacteria
2. Regularly check employees private lockers (but this last point we would anyway have to do, because of other rules in the FSSC sertification process. For example there is not allowed to store food in lockerrooms. There is not allowed to store any equipment from production in locker rooms. A problem we currently know we have.)
----
I am not finished with my calculations on this, but it seems to me that you can do this with under half the costs of using an ISO-certified washer. Probably closer to 1/3 or 1/4. I will show my calculations in this forum when I am complete.
Kind regards, Gard Valaker
Looks to me as though you've been receiving some valid responses to this situation.Without having direct knowledge of the FSSC standard to much detail, I can say that BRC requires specific validation for your cleaning processes. I imagine this might be a commonality between all GFSI standards, but I'm unsure.
I think you are on the right track as far as setting up an in-house process, but many of us choose to outsource because self-cleaning is actually not as easy as it seems. These companies that provide uniform cleaning already have validation and verification testing done on their cleaning processes.
You are going to have to validate (and often verify) that your cleaning process is effective. You'd need an in-house lab, or to send your clothes out to a lab for testing. You'd probably have to buy some ATP testing equipment as well if you intend to verify your results periodically. While your costs may appear to be lower at this point, I would think that lab and testing costs would still drive your expenses to be a tad higher than you anticipate.
hi
we are an emerging baking company from a small town in Canada looking for SQF certification .... we have small dedicated laundry room and we do our laundry by our own self . if this fits in the SQF system.. as a small company we have a staff of 18-22 employees. being a small scale industry do we need the professional cleaning of aprons or smocks used.
Regards
Anup Sharma