5 Questions with Paul Barnhill, Chief Technology Officer, Meritech

1. Could you breakdown what it means to S.A.V.E. when it comes to food safety?

One is “standardize.” Establishing a standard hygiene process sets the foundation for a positive food safety culture. Two is “automate.” Automation makes it exponentially easier to standardize hygiene. Three is “validate.” Validating the effectiveness of your new hygiene process is crucial. Four is “educate.” Constant education on why these new processes were implemented is important to maintain a positive food safety culture.

2. How does standardization help with creating a food safety culture?

Standardization is about consistency. If a standard hygiene process is put into place, then that sets the foundation for your organization’s food safety culture. It is therefore crucial to make sure that every process implemented is simple and easy to understand for all. A simple, automated and standardized hygiene process develops consistency from person to person and from facility to facility.

3 .How does automating hygiene address challenges that are present in the industry today?

There’s still an uncomfortable amount of variability in the industry when it comes to hygiene. People aren’t performing a perfect hand wash or boot scrub every single time, so there’s always going to be a risk of pathogen spread. Automating the hygiene process removes that variability by standardizing it throughout a facility so that more than 99.9% of pathogens are removed every time.

4. How does automating the hygiene process help with validation and education?

Today’s world is all about data. With automated hygiene equipment, managers can track each hand wash so they can verify that hand hygiene protocols are effective. Plus, rather than training and retraining on the proper handwashing steps, automation streamlines training in three simple steps: just place your hands in, wait 12 seconds and take them out and dry with a clean paper towel.

5. Has automated hygiene evolved to become even more helpful in today’s food industry?

Absolutely. Traditionally, users may have been hesitant to use new technologies over sinks. However, automated hygiene has advanced even further in recent years to become more visually appealing. Today’s systems provide a large color display that shows instructions on how to operate the stations right when you walk up, a countdown timer and hygiene event graphs that can be configured by day, week or month for added insight into compliance.