23 Jan 2025
Developing Hygiene Solutions in Manufacturing Environments
Hygiene is important in any environment, but in manufacturing, especially regulated environments like the food and pharmaceutical sectors, it forms a mission critical part of the production operation.
It is the start and end of the manufacturing process, yet it is often the most under invested, invisible, underdeveloped part of the process.
Hygiene provision across the manufacturing sectors is varied, with large industrial and automotive seeing the highest proportion of outsourced hygiene operations, followed by pharmaceutical, then food manufacturing; the latter being the most under-developed for a significant period of time.
So why do people outsource production hygiene?
There are many reasons, each organisation has different strategic goals, but commonly these can be:
Cost reduction or optimising to meet budget constraints
As the world becomes more competitive, with the additional pressure of the cost-of-living crisis and new budget changes, the cost of goods, services and employee costs are rising at pace. These costs need to be funded, and with many organisations budgeting a year in advance, this can be challenging and requires action to be taken to ensure profitability, with the cost impact usually being funded by a change in base operating costs and or reduction in employee costs.
A need for innovation and continuous improvement
This is often required as production processes change over time. It’s an area where non- specialist providers or in-house operations face their biggest challenge, as there is a lack of knowledge outside of the area of service delivery. Without this knowledge, there is little expertise to effect change.
Challenges with recruitment and learning/development of employees
There is often limited resource and knowledge to support hygiene operatives and management.
Administrative challenges that reduce the pressure on in-house teams
By outsourcing, you also remove the HR, management and payroll elements to the provider, freeing up management time and potentially increasing cash flow as most providers will invoice once per month, where in-house operations often operate a weekly or bi weekly payroll.
Lack of in-house digital solutions to support an ever-developing digital landscape
Many companies simply cannot invest in off the shelf or bespoke digital solutions to improve service standards, whereas an outsourced provider can, to support multiple clients, often at no cost to the client. The investment is recouped by the savings the digital solution and subsequent data gathered will enable.
In today’s financial climate, any action to optimise or reduce cost has to be explored.
Often the production element of the process is highly invested and constantly being improved as part of a wider continuous improvement plan, customer demand or product innovation.
Optimisation, usually, for most companies, means headcount reduction, or the reduction of working in hours. In manufacturing, this is not always possible due to large sites, complex hygiene requirements, regulatory audit and quality standard requirements.
Many companies that deliver hygiene in-house or use a non-specialist service provider have one form of reference, usually limited to their own operation. Typically, people working in manufacturing, whether production or hygiene are ‘lifers’ and often multi-generational, which means new starters with fresh ideas are rare, although the longevity of service is great from an experience and reduced churn perspective. A potential downside is that it often results in one, proven way of doing things, with limited innovation or cost optimisation over time, despite the production element potentially changing and flexing to meet demand. This is where external partners can add value, resource and investment, often at pace.
As a specialist service provider, Excellerate has an operational responsibility and view of several manufacturing operations, across all sectors. This allows us to share innovation, best practice, solutions to issues found on other client sites and bring this knowledge, and importantly, people with expertise, to review the operation for potential clients, looking at shift patterns, hours, overtime and working methods, equipment and training.
Often, shifts can be restructured and overtime reduced with minimal impact to the headcount, by increasing productivity and removing reliance on agency provision, utilising data, analysing trends and building a solution that provides optimised service. And it is easily adaptable for future production requirements.
How data shapes innovation
In production hygiene, time and motion studies have often been the most effective way to gather data to optimise a Master Sanitation Schedule. This involves a manager visually measuring time to task, frequency and skill set, and then building a labour model to meet the number of hours required to deliver, across, usually, a 24/7 operation.
A time and motion study, whilst time consuming, adds a lot of value as it provides a rich data set. The downside is that is only correct at the point of completion, rather than ongoing changes or shifts in production requirements, where the process would have to be completed again, at significant investment in time and resource.
With the introduction of asset sensors, RIFD and QR codes, the data is pushed from sensors or collected by handheld devices as an activity is completed. This process can be completed in real time, day in day out, shift by shift. This provides up-to-date, usable performance data, detailing time to task, quality metrics, audit results and cost of service.
At Excellerate, we use a proprietary (and award winning!) system called Velocity, a digital approach to hygiene management that provides a number of functions:
Time and motion
Service level agreements/KPI
Delivery specifications /Master Sanitation Schedule (MSS)
Cleaning Instruction Cards (CIC)
Task Completion
Process Confirmation
RAMS
Audit
This functionality and data collection provides a deep insight into performance, with AI and human performance trend analysis, identifies and recommends areas of improvement, concern and optimisation opportunity.
Velocity also provides an employee platform to book time off, manage pay and hours and access employee benefits, providing a singular, digital platform for all aspects of contact and operational management, with detailed client reporting and evidential records, particularly important in GMP and regulated environments, when often only a paper sign-off sheet exists.
Craig Roberts has over 20 years’ experience working with some of the leading food, pharmaceutical and industrial manufacturing companies in the UK and Ireland, across Europe and internationally.
Craig’s experience enables him to build close working relationships with clients and our own operations team to create solutions that optimise cost and increase quality, providing a measurable increase in hygiene quality standards, whether measured by BRC, AIB and USDA in Food, MHRA and FDA in Life Science’s or customer audits in the industrial sector.
Craig is a member of, and an active participant in the Society of Food Hygiene Technology.
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Company Registration Number: 02770135 | VAT Registration Number: GB625622450
Company Registration Number: 02770135
VAT Registration Number: GB625622450
VAT Registration Number: GB625622450