HYGIENIC DESIGN: PROCESS MATTERS

Hygienic design: Process matters. How do you ensure hygiene during fish processing? Siemens took this challenge to Torsten Rusko, Head of Mechanical Design at BAADER. In “unpacked”, the Siemens Packaging Podcast, he gave a super compact introduction into hygienic machine design basics:

Food safety is extremely important, especially for perishable products such as fish. For this reason, we are experts in developing and supplying highly efficient innovative machinery and systems for safe food production. Food safety has a lot of aspects, of course, but at the end of the day, it will be a team challenge. Food producer, machine supplier, and cleaning personnel have to play on a high professional level, and one important aspect is the hygienic design of our machines. A challenge is the use of water in our machines. Microorganisms can only live, spread, and grow where water is available.

Many Aspects Influence the Design Process

Not all fish are the same. For example, sashimi salmon and smoked salmon will be consumed raw without additional cooking or frying. This means the food safety risk is much higher than with preserved fish or canned fish products, so machines for salmon processing have to fulfill a higher level of hygienic design. The design itself is important and there we have to comply with regulations and guidelines. But development engineers and designers have to have knowledge about the product, the production process, the cleaning process and the environment for the machinery.

Changing the Perspective

Developing a good hygienic design is about changing perspective. We need to see our machine design through the eyes of the cleaning or production personnel. How does cleaning happen in the environment that the machine is in? What is difficult to clean or what is impossible to clean, for example, without dismantling parts? We need information about cleaning and disinfection agents, such as concentration and temperature, to select the right materials, and whether the cleaning should be done manually or with an automatic cleaning-in-place system, which is something that especially larger companies are asking for. We have to identify the pain points to choose a design that is really working.

‍Aligning the Requirements of Hygienic Design with General Machine Design

As with all design aspects, hygienic design is an important factor, but it is not the only one. Functionality, sizing, usability, maintenance, safety, and, of course, pricing are other aspects. The job of the design team is to bring all these requirements of hygienic design and general machine design together to find the best compromise of all these requirements.

BAADER Spearheads Hygienic Machine Design

Training and awareness are very important. At BAADER, we have developed our own hygienic design handbook. This document explains hygienic design basics and some BAADER-specific issues in a short and simple way. We have implemented a Hygienic Design team. This team provides information, evaluates, and discusses hygienic design solutions in our organization. We challenge suppliers and partners with hygienic solutions, and we are a member of the European Hygienic Engineering and Design Group to share and exchange expertise.

Our key to success: We look at the product and the process, we align the requirements of hygienic design with the general machine design. And we include the people involved.

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