Preventive maintenance in the food industry

Can preventive maintenance be applied in the food industry? Of course and it is very necessary. In this industry, the focus will be on two categories: reliability and hygiene. Unlike industries that produce consumer goods where products are not perishable, in the case of the food industry - hygiene measures come first.

The design of food processing equipment requires a lot of experience in the field. I mentioned the design because, if done well, it will result in lower costs for hygiene and maintenance.

Storing food for a longer period of time under certain conditions will lead to the appearance of enzymes, bacteria and mold. Some of these should not appear in our production process. In many cases, automatic sanitation of equipment is very expensive or even impossible - so - regular sanitation will be done manually. This will be confirmed in many cases by laboratory tests that will confirm or deny the presence of pathogens.

As you can see, in the food industry - in addition to the requirement of equipment reliability - there is also the requirement of sanitation. Therefore, the ranges of preventive maintenance will include two types of operations - some to keep the equipment in working order and others to sanitize them.

Sanitation activities will always be carried out at the end of the intervention, when appropriate.

The steps we need to take in order to implement preventive maintenance are as follows:

- selection of equipment to be included in this activity

- establishing spare parts

- staff training

- drawing up work plans and identifying their launch frequency

- establishing the most efficient routes for work orders

- analysis of the feedback recorded by the operators who carry out the work orders

- optimization of work plans by maintenance engineers

- preparation of reports highlighting equipment problems

Particular attention will be paid to drawing up work plans in which sanitation operations should not be neglected.

Rely on preventive maintenance, apply it correctly and positive results will appear.