If you run any type of processing facility, you know how important it is to keep everything ultra clean. These are just some of the reasons your facility needs to adhere to strict hygienic practices:

• Your Customers: The products you’re creating need to be safe for your customers to consume. Whether you’re processing food or beverages, or you’re making cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, it’s important that no contaminants enter into the product streams.
• FDA Compliance: The FDA and other organizations create industry standards that must be followed when processing or manufacturing products that will be consumed; your company needs to adhere to these.
• Your Employees: For the health, safety, and wellbeing of everyone working for you, especially on the manufacturing floor, it’s important that your company maintain high levels of cleanliness.
• The Environment: Too many companies around the world operate in less than ideal ways that put a strain on our planet’s ecology. Don’t run a dirty manufacturing operation; keep cleanliness as one of your top priorities.
• Quality Assurance: How can you assure the quality of your products? You need to pay close attention to building your facility in a manner that guarantees the integrity of your ingredients and end products, and you also have to have a solid quality assurance system in place.

The rest of our blog is dedicated to offering tips that can help your business run cleanly without polluting the environment, contaminating your products, or endangering anyone.

Build A Closed, Clean System

Maintaining high levels of sanitation at your manufacturing facility begins with designing your processing systems. You will need to design and build a closed system that maintains the quality and integrity of your ingredients and raw materials without letting any contaminants in, and without spewing pollution out.

Our silicone hose products at Flex Technologies are suitable components for most manufacturing and processing plants. Unlike rubber, they are not porous, which means that impurities cannot enter through the silicone hose materials. So long as you design and build your system well, making sure to seal everything carefully, your silicone hose tubing will keep the ingredients you’re transporting safe from contamination.

Study The Standards Of Your Industry

Every industry has come up with standards that need to be followed. Especially with products that people (or pets and other animals) eat, drink, apply to their skin, or use as medications, these standards are very strict in order to protect the population. As the owner or manager of a processing plant, you need to be very familiar with these standards; make sure that you adhere to industry standards for the safety of everyone who comes into contact with your products, from your workers to your customers.

Set Up Conditional Plans

In the event that something unexpected happens during processing, what plans do you have in place? Before you open for business, you need to develop conditional plans for those times when something goes wrong. For starters, you’ll need cleaning and decontamination stations located throughout your facility. You’ll also need shutoff procedures and evacuation plans. Create contingency plans for those instances that you’d rather avoid but you need to be prepared for.

Train Your Employees On Sanitary Practices

You can’t assume that every person on the manufacturing floor is well versed in the best sanitary practices. You have to train your employees in order to make sure they don’t inadvertently contaminate any part of the process stream. Be sure to train any new people as well as hold periodic trainings to keep everyone up to date on the best hygiene practices.

Our Silicone Hoses

As we mentioned earlier in this blog, we believe that our silicone hoses are the right choice for processing plants that deal with comestibles, potables, pharmaceuticals, and any creams, lotions, cosmetics, or similar products that are applied directly to your skin. That’s because silicone hoses are stable and can keep contaminants and impurities out of the product streams.

If you’re ready to learn more about our quality silicone tubing products and how they can serve you well in your manufacturing facility design, get in touch with the technical teams at Flex Technologies. As a silicone hose manufacturer and distributor based in California, we help clients in a wide range of industries across the nation with their custom processing plant designs. We’re ready to help you, too; get in touch with us today!