Layout and Product Flow Advice

Hello all

The plant I am working in wants to carry out some building repairs. so the quality team is looking at the product flow and the personnel flow.
This plant manufactures meat products, mainly cooked sausage and also smoked-cured sausages and other smoked-cured products.

Currently there is physical segregation between mince meat production area, sausage production area, cooking area, chilled area and packaging area.

But I have two doubts as for two things:

1- the trolley holding the raw sausages, once full, is weighted in a scale within the sausage room, next to the door leading to the cooking room. The person in charge of the cooking step takes the trolley and places it into the cooker.
Seems to be clear that the "sausage room" is a dirty area and the chilled room ( full of cooked product ) is a clean area , but what about the cooking area, is it clean or dirty ? both? if the later, how to segregate both sub-areas?

Is it good practice that that person is touching the trolley before and afterwards the cooking proccess ??

2- On the other hand, the trolley holding the sausages already cooked has to cross an aisle ( 2 meters wide ) before entering the blast chiller.
What do you thing about crossing that aisle?

The layuot od the plant is in the shape of U

Appreciate your comments

Regards

Esther

When looked at very closely many processes appear to have the same weakness as the one you describe. It certainly raises some concerns and is not best practice. The BRC Global Standard Issue 4 had the concept of 'Transfer Points' where these were identified special controls needed to be developed. A plant I had dealings with cooked airline meals in Bratt pans, the same Chef cooking and emptying the pan. The control that they settled on involved:-

1. Temp check >85oC, 2. decant into clean tray 3. temp check and transfer to blast chill whilst >75oC (still sterilising). The process employed involved a demarcation line at the entrance of the blast chill across no one could step. The tray was passed across to an awaiting rack.

With regards your specific issue my concerns are:

1. Recontamination i.e. handling below 63oC[start of the danger zone]

2. Reconatmination i.e. contamination of surfaces in the blast chill in which a highly turbulant air flow which could easily lift bacteria. Likely causes feet or trolley wheels.

3. Recontamination You never mentioned drains Which way do they flow?

Best of luck with your problem

Cheers

Dear Esther,

As nicely illustrated in the previous post (and welcome to the forum foodmanuk) a lot of factors may be involved.

1. Not quite sure of yr exact cooking layout but to take a simpler situation than previous –

If you have an enclosed rectangular cooker with a continuous conveyor belt feed in and out and steam injected from the top, then the product is fully cooked at exit of unit so that a physical barrier is set up at that point and the personnel / handling utensils etc on each side are designated “raw” and “cooked” respectively with appropriate hygiene management.

It immediately gets more complicated if you have a large round cooking vessel or some other circular flow path as per compromise of previous example . This automatically overlaps into point 2.

2. The principle is that all stages involving receiving / transfer / packing of cooked product are integrated so that no further interaction with raw product contact areas or ‘raw” personnel is possible, this also requires dedicated freezers and "clean" environments.

and 3. Obviously, the time / temp / (success in removing contamination aspects) are reflected into the CCPs and micro.results. compared to yr specifications.

Rgds / Charles.C.

Hello Foodmanuk and CharlesC.

Thank you very much for your answers.

Foodmanuk, you have made a very good point with your example And that makes me think that the whole thing will not be so difficult to deal with but first I will carry out same microbiological essays. Now It seems to me that the fact of crossing that aisle is not of much concern, it takes just 5 seconds to reach the blast chiller from the cooker.

Charles, this process is a non-continuous one, I mean, the single trolley goes into the cooker and after reaching the temperature of 72 ºC, the trolley is taken out the cooker. So, as you said, care should be taken regarding the personnel and the handling utensils rather than placing a physical barrier.

BEst regards

Esther

Dear Esther,

Hopefully someone has worked out ( and validated) the sufficiency of the time / temperature profile also.

Rgds / Charles.C