How detailed is your warehouse cleaning schedule?
Hey just a curiosity, I am writing the cleaning schedule for our warehouse (we produce bottled water that is packaged and shipped worldwide) and I am wondering how detailed everybody's warehouse cleaning schedule is? our skids of product are all shrink wrapped so there may be dust on them if they sit for a little while but besides that and floors, what suggestions do you have to put on the schedule? I need to make sure that it will be good for our SQF audit in the future. So I'm thinking that I will need daily, weekly, monthly, and periodically scheduled cleaning lists.
Thanks
Ashley
Nanton Water & Soda Ltd.
Depending on the configuration of your warehouse space and construction, overheads (sprinkler piping, electrical conduit), lighting, dock doors, floors, racking, etc. should be considered.
Standard 30/60/90 inspections/cleaning/restacking/repalletizing of ingredients.
Generally, in a warehouse, the cleaning activity should be described as "Inspect and clean as necessary" X area of warehouse.
You do not want to have your staff cleaning things that do not need to be cleaned.
Since you are setting up this from scratch, do inspections on a monthly basis. If something needs cleaning after a month, schedule it for cleaning monthly. If it does not need cleaning, inspect the next month. If it needs cleaning, schedule it for 60 days. Repeat as necessary.
It's imperative that you constantly consider the cleaning frequency you have for all items on your MSS.
When I got to my current job, cleaning the yellow bollards that prevent forklifts from (hopefully) running into things were on a daily schedule!! I immediately changed that to "inspect and clean" on a 14 day basis. We now do it monthly.
Can you imagine how many man hours have been saved to do things that actually need to be cleaned?
Marshall
Depending on the configuration of your warehouse space and construction, overheads (sprinkler piping, electrical conduit), lighting, dock doors, floors, racking, etc. should be considered.
Standard 30/60/90 inspections/cleaning/restacking/repalletizing of ingredients.
Generally, in a warehouse, the cleaning activity should be described as "Inspect and clean as necessary" X area of warehouse.
You do not want to have your staff cleaning things that do not need to be cleaned.Since you are setting up this from scratch, do inspections on a monthly basis. If something needs cleaning after a month, schedule it for cleaning monthly. If it does not need cleaning, inspect the next month. If it needs cleaning, schedule it for 60 days. Repeat as necessary.
It's imperative that you constantly consider the cleaning frequency you have for all items on your MSS.
When I got to my current job, cleaning the yellow bollards that prevent forklifts from (hopefully) running into things were on a daily schedule!! I immediately changed that to "inspect and clean" on a 14 day basis. We now do it monthly.
Can you imagine how many man hours have been saved to do things that actually need to be cleaned?
Marshall
That is a great approach. I would also say to monitor items after you clean them to determine when they need to be cleaned next. If you are creating a schedule, go ahead and set it for monthly then when you go to clean it in a month, determine if that is a justified amount of time or if you need to change it to be more or less frequent.
In our plant, we have warehouse items monthly, quarterly and annually. But everyone's facility is different! Think of the following items(this is not a complete list);
- Emergency lights/signs
- Trash or cardboard compactor areas
- Hi-lo charging stations
- Wall, beams, borders, curbs
- Overhead doors
- Compressors
And just remember, if you miss something you can always add it on the schedule with a revision. It's all about learning and improving. Hope this helps!!
Don't forget Trash Barrels and Fans!
Thanks everybody for all of your input! You have been very helpful! I thought I was going to need a daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/annually schedule same as the other areas of the plant. Saved me a lot of paperwork!
We have a MSS but my problem is getting management to supply the man hours to accomplish the tasks. They are so bent on production that more often than not I am the only one out there doing the cleaning. Our process produces lots of paper dust that settles on everything. Any suggestions on how I can turn the attitude towards cleaning around?
In my old company I had the same problem. I think it is very important who is addressed, the management or the actual employees.
I found it to be helpful to find easy ways for the employees to clean (so they wouldn’t have too spend too much time on it), and then try to sell it to management as easier and more effective, if possible cheaper.
If everything else fails, you might want to show them the standard, loosing the standard may very well mean losing their jobs, but that argument fails between audits.
Changing the culture is very hard, wish you the best of luck.