Capturing data to improve manual cleaning

Every night in Flemish companies, dozens of cleaning teams are hard at work getting the production spic and span ready for the start-up the next morning. As a quality manager, you may have insight into whether cleaning has been done effectively, but how well it has been done usually remains a blind spot. Ecolab is now changing this. With its solution Manual Cleaning Insights it brings data together, black on white, so that every morning you can read in a report what to do to take your hygiene to a higher level.

Not everything can already be automated. Cleaning is also partly a manual job in most food companies. But that presents a number of challenges. "A cleaning crew only has a limited number of hours available to do the job. No matter how well the procedures are described, you can't guarantee that every surface has been treated at the right temperature, with the right dose of chemicals and for long enough. It is a hopeless task to check all this manually," explains Arne Daneels, Marketing Associate at Ecolab. Yet it can just be useful to gain more insight into this. "In the first place, of course, to guarantee food safety. But in addition, data could also tell us more about where possible savings are in terms of water and chemicals."

Measurement and follow-up of manual cleaning

This was the starting point for Ecolab to develop Manual Cleaning Insights (MCI). "MCI tracks and measures manual cleaning activities for consistent results with data and insights that help increase compliance and efficiency and verify results," summarizes Daneels. It works very simply. On the satellites present in the production area, Ecolab places a number of sensors. These can now begin to collect data on foaming, rinsing and disinfecting. "That data is transmitted wirelessly to the MCI Controller, which uses a SIM connection to send the data securely to the cloud, without having to use the company network. In the cloud, the quality manager finds everything in his own MCI dashboard. This dashboard tells him what was measured at each satellite: flow rate, air pressure, consumption of chemicals, duration of the activity, ... But he can also see at a glance what did not go according to the hygiene rules. That way, he can intervene to ensure food safety."

Turning data into recommendations as well

Ecolab did not take any chances when developing MCI. After all, reliability was paramount. For more than a year and a half now, the application has been fine-tuned in various test projects. "Especially to convert the data into insights that a quality manager can use efficiently," Daneels explains. "For example, he gets to see the anomalies immediately, supplemented with concrete recommendations in a report that is generated daily and sent automatically. But he can also dive deep into the details of each cleaning and visualize each parameter to get a clear view of possible causes of problems. Furthermore, real-time alerts when certain values are exceeded help prevent problems from escalating."

Smart. Clear. Connected.

Ecolab's smart MCI technology thus helps save costs and reduce waste. Daneels: "Manual cleaning processes are still a vital part of food companies' hygiene plans. But it is also becoming increasingly important to be able to control and verify those processes. That's exactly what MCI does. You have very easy access to the data of critical parameters. So you can be sure that your production is cleaned correctly from A to Z."    

Specifically, what does MCI provide?

-Verify manual cleaning and disinfection tasks
-Save money by being able to start production on time
-Improve efficiency by optimizing resource consumption
- Guarantee product quality
- Improve your sustainability profile