What Are We Standardizing? Letʼs begin with what we are not making standard. 1. We are not going to standardize when the cleaning is done. The cleaning frequency specifications we so often see are not the way to go. There are too many variables, even from day to day in the same facility. 2. We are not going to standardize cer-tain products or procedures. Much of the foot dragging that has prevented the development of a sensible clean-ing standard comes from the overly cautious element in the supply sector that fears its particular product or application will not be the one stipulat-ed to be used. Letʼs set that obstacle aside. Let the user determine what works and what doesnʼt. 3. We are not going to standardize pro-duction rates. There are too many variables here as well. That leaves us with only one thing that has standardization merit, and that is the result or outcome of the cleaning effort. The standard must be something that can be judged and evaluated — even measured when there is a need to do so. To better understand this, letʼs use a sit-uation familiar to us all: Service in a restau-rant. What is it that engages your attention the most? We judge a restaurant by its food — not the size of the kitchen, not the training of the cook, not the condition of the pots and pans and not even by the kitchenʼs appearance. In fact, after a long time of receiving good service at the same place, even the sanita-tion issue is forgotten. Only the food and its timely arrival at a fair price, taste, quantity and visual appeal matters. Only recently are we seeing people attending to details such as calorie count and trans fat avoidance, but the meal itself is still the standard for judgment. Read your local food criticʼs column. What we need to standardize in our serv-ice work is the outcome of the cleaning effort, judged soon after the cleaning is done and before any re-soiling or reconta-mination has occurred. With this in mind, we can define quality cleaning as the complete removal of any and all surface blemishes or cleaning indi-cators. The “Universal Clean Surface Criterion” is this: “A surface is judged visibly clean if, upon examination soon after the cleaning effort is completed, no removable blemish-es — cleaning indicators — are apparent.” This means that a surface is either clean or unclean. If there are no visible unwanted sub-stances, this means it is clean. The presence of any unwanted residues — including cleaning chemicals — means it is still in need of cleaning. Yes, it is clean. No, it isnʼt clean. That is as simple as you can get. The second part of this article will appear in next monthʼs issue. CM Circle Product Information no. 202 on page 32 www.cmmonline.com 21
CMM – Archives Mar 2010: 21
