instore - August 2017 - COMM - 14

Operations

"No one beneﬁts from any of us having a food safety event.
That's why it's so important that all the baking companies and
equipment manufacturers participate in ensuring that we have
a relevant standard and also a reference in how we install, build
and maintain our processing equipment because everyone loses if
there's a problem."
Rowdy Brixey, president, Brixey Engineering
tional injuries and illnesses. Furthermore, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
report says more than 67,000 food preparation and serving workers hurt themselves on the job badly enough to lose
at least a day of work per year. Nearly
20 percent of those workers missed 31
or more days of works. That adds up in
expenditures that come straight out of
company profits.
"We stress that you have to have ongoing emphasis that safety is first,"
says consultant Lewis Shaye. "If you
keep it top-of-mind and you talk
about accidents and how you can
prevent them and have that safety
dialogue and coaching sessions on
a daily basis, that's really important.
When you get the right equipment,
the right training and the right kind
of pre-planning, you've got the chemistry for success."

Updated standards
"We use a lot of manual labor, so we're
constantly dealing with carpal tunnel,
strained backs," says David Hipenbecker, senior director of engineering for
Hostess Brands and committee member
for the Z50 Safety & Sanitation Committee. "Bakers have faced the whole
ergonomics issue for years. We want to
eliminate repetitive motion as much as
we can."
Protecting the workforce from potential equipment and environment risks is
in the best interest of not just individual
bakeries but also the industry at large.
"We all have a responsibility to ensure
the safety of our associates and our products," says Rowdy Brixey, president,
Brixey Engineering, Safety & Training,
and member, Z50 Safety & Sanitation
Committee. "No one benefits from any

14 * AUGUST 2017

of us having a food safety event. That's
why it's so important that all the baking
companies and equipment manufacturers participate in ensuring that we have
a relevant standard and also a reference
in how we install, build and maintain
our processing equipment because everyone loses if there's a problem."
In 1943, the American Society of Bakery Engineers (ASB) held a general
conference that led to the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI)
establishing the Z50 Committee. With
the ASB as secretariat, it developed
and approved a standard of safety in
1947. That standard has been revised
and replaced multiple times throughout its history to keep up with the
needs of a changing industry. Today,
the industry follows two ANSI standards, the Z50.1 Safety Standards and
the Z50.2 Sanitation Standards.
"It is intended to provide guidance in
safe design for the equipment manufacturer and guidance for the baker to
help ensure they maintain their equipment safely and to provide operational
instruction to the employee," explained
Jon Anderson, JRA Occupational Safety
Consulting. Anderson serves alongside
with Hipenbecker and Brixey on the
Z50 Safety & Sanitation Committee.
This year, the Z50.1 Safety Standards
are up for review again by the committee, a review that happens every five
years to ensure the document is relevant to the industry. The aim is to give
the baking industry the most useful reference guide possible to keep workers
and food safe.

Evolving safety needs
From manual production with bakers
tending to every step of the process to

commissary INSIDER

fully automated production lines running with minimal human interaction,
the baking industry and its operations
have changed dramatically. With each
technological innovation has come
the question, "How does this impact
worker and food safety?" The baking
industry has adapted to these changes
well to create a generally safe environment for its employees.
"Bakeries have done an exceptional
job of making sure their plants are
safe," says Phil Domenicucci, baking
systems manager, AMF Bakery Systems, and vice-chairman, Z50 Safety
& Sanitation Committee. "The plants
have done such a good job of creating
safety nets in their systems: the lockout/tagouts and other requirements
requiring safety shoes, hard hats,
hearing protection, eye protection and
safety meetings. Everyone is looking
out for safety. If you walked into a
plant 25 years ago, you wouldn't see
any of that."
Concerns about safety and automation have led not only to changes
in worker protection standards but
also to new information of the dangers of hard labor and repetitive motion. Where 100-lb bags of flour were
once the norm, bakeries now often
opt for 50-lb bags. Not only that, operators can get help from equipment
to lift and move these bags to take
the strain off human backs.
"We're trying to figure out better ergonomic work stations, but we're also
trying to give tools and aids and even
provide automation where we can
eliminate those repetitive motions,"
Hipenbecker says. "People are paying a lot more attention to conveyor
height and ergonomic design so people aren't leaning and reaching as far
as they were in the past."
Today, plants are even going further
than making the production line more
ergonomically friendly and employing
safety managers, even nurses. These
positions can drive risk assessments
on new equipment and plant layouts
as well as set up wellness and safety
programs to encourage good habits
for plant operators.

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