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What Belongs on a Master Sanitation Schedule (MSS)?

Started by , Nov 13 2025 04:17 PM
2 Replies

Good morning 

My plants MSS has every single cleaning in the entire building.  This includes cleanings done by warehouse employees, production employees to even the maintenance techs cleaning up after their PMs.  We are audited by SQF.   Im wondering which of these cleanings really belong on an MSS?  In my mind, it would make sense to only have cleanings that are done by sanitation on the MSS but I am new and im still learning the sanitation world.

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For an MSS Program, I list every single cleaning as you described, regardless of who does it, along with the established frequency and which form the record is kept.  This leads your team and auditors to then go review your daily logs of sanitation's work on the equipment and lines, or a maintenance record showing the equipment was cleaned after a PM, so on and so forth.  I keep a separate MSS Checklist Form(s) for some of those mundane activities that get handled less frequently and whomever was available, things like overhead lights or beams, warehouse sweeps, etc.

 

But listing each and every item in the actual program document helps to building a starting point to make sure you don't end up with areas missed.

I was about to type I've only ever listed things inside the facility but that's not true.  I've listed ancillary areas too and also irrespective of who does it.

I've never included ad hoc stuff (like post maintenance) as that's captured elsewhere but to my mind the purpose of the MSS is to capture the outputs of your risk assessment on cleaning frequency then actually track whether you're doing it or not.  When there are areas (even the lights, walls etc which I wouldn't call ad hoc) which are done "when someone is free" it can easily get lost on how long it's been since they were last done.  So you can use your MSS to track completion and react if you're getting off track.


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