Food safety is essential to frozen food production, and the newest developments in automated equipment play a critical role in maintaining food safety for consumers. There are several significant food hazards that can jeopardize the safety of the food manufacturing process. Not following food safety guidelines or using outdated equipment can lead to consumer sickness and even fatality. That’s why it’s so important to employ the best methods possible to maintain food safety in manufacturing, such as employing the latest equipment that improves food safety. Automated frozen food equipment makes it simple to improve food safety.
Here, we’ll explore just how the latest developments in automated food equipment improve food safety and what some food production safety methods are. But first, we’ll review food hazards that are present in food assembly lines and how to address them with automated equipment.
Food Hazards
There are a number of potential food hazards present in a food assembly line. If proper precautions aren’t taken, you may potentially jeopardize your products and customer health. Knowing about such hazards will help your company take the right steps to ensure that your frozen food products are safe for your customers. Food hazards in an assembly line include pathogen contamination, food material expiry, and dirty equipment.
Pathogen Contamination
Pathogen contamination can cause severe and even fatal sickness, so it’s imperative to improve safety in food production to avoid this. Employees are common vectors of foodborne pathogens when they don’t wash their hands before handling food or if they handle food when they’re sick. One of the easiest ways to prevent pathogen contamination is to rely on automated food assembly where possible. Relying on automated food equipment decreases the number of human employees that handle food and thus decreases the chance of passing on a pathogen to the food. At Quantum, we offer a wide range of frozen food production equipment that automates your assembly line, limiting the number of employees handling your products.
Food Material Expiry
Preventing food material expiry is also important to keep your products safe. If manual assembly or machines don’t apply ingredients fast enough, the ingredients could expire. Implementing equipment with a high ingredient turnover rate ensures that the ingredients won’t expire before they’re even applied! As a result, your product won’t be safe for your customers. Quantum equipment can assemble up to thousands of frozen food products per day, allowing ingredients to be used quickly so that they aren’t sitting in the machines.
Dirty Equipment
The last of the food hazards we’ll explore is dirty equipment. Over time, dirt and bacteria can build up, especially without proper care and regular maintenance. If machines aren’t cleaned, the food can become contaminated. If your company’s equipment is difficult to disassemble to clean effectively, this might demotivate your staff from cleaning the equipment properly. At Quantum, we believe in making machine maintenance easy and seamless, which is why our equipment requires little to no disassembly for simple maintenance. Most of our equipment is also wash-down compatible for even easier cleaning. Having easy-to-clean equipment incentivizes staff to keep the machinery well-maintained and safe for food manufacturing.
Pathogen contamination, food material expiry, and dirty equipment can all jeopardize the safety of a company’s food products. However, relying on equipment that considers these issues allows a brand to maintain food safety. Next, we’ll dive into how to incorporate the equipment needed to keep your products safe and also cover production safety methods.
Food Safety in Manufacturing and Production Safety Methods
Using the right equipment for food safety in manufacturing can improve your overall production practices. Keeping your machines clean means regular maintenance, which is generally a best practice. So is making sure your ingredients are used quickly and that your staff partakes in proper hygiene before they handle food to prevent the spread of disease. These production safety methods are critical to maintaining the safety of your assembly line. Now, let’s look at the equipment’s critical role in safety in frozen food production.
Strategize Equipment Use
Strategizing equipment use in your assembly line is key to maximizing food safety. Employing the equipment you need maintains food safety in manufacturing. This ensures that your production line is utilizing every machine and not allowing a piece of equipment to degrade over time and then be used sporadically. Continual use and maintenance of the machines that your company needs keep your frozen food products safe. If you have a question about which types of automated food equipment could be right for your production line, be sure to contact us at Quantum. Our solution experts can recommend which machines can benefit your food manufacturing process.
Scheduled Maintenance
The equipment’s role in food safety can only be fulfilled if the machines are regularly maintained and cleaned. Scheduled maintenance makes sure that the equipment is assembling the best food products it can. Addressing issues as they happen is often not enough to maintain productivity and food safety, which is why scheduled maintenance is critical. Scheduled tune-ups can fix issues before they become a major challenge to food production.
Staff Training
While Quantum’s automated equipment requires minimal staffing to oversee assembly and restock ingredients, holding periodic staff training on food handling safety and hygiene can also improve food safety. Even though it’s best to automate where your company can to minimize food handling, staff training is also vital to food production safety. Holding quarterly or yearly safety training reminds employees of the importance of proper hygiene when handling food materials. This allows employees and the automated equipment to work efficiently while maintaining food safety standards.
Improve Food Safety with Quantum
Quantum Technical Services is the most trusted name in the food manufacturing industry because we provide top-of-the-line equipment accompanied by stellar customer service. Our automated engineered solutions improve production line operations, quality, and food safety to help our clients exceed customer expectations. Contact us at Quantum today to improve the food safety of your manufacturing processes.