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Warehouse Sanitation
Welcome to Week 10 of 2019 and to Episode 128 of Warehouse
and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty T
Hawkins and WAOC is in Orlando Florida today.
I had an opportunity to visit a conference this week, I always enjoy
seeing old friends in the industry and learning something new every day! Speaking of learning and being that we’re
almost thru the 1st quarter, how’s everyone doing with their plans
and goals? I’m pretty much on track with
mine but I have made a couple of adjustments.
I’m looking at where I spend my money and my time much closer than I use
too. Going forward I’m going to pay much
more attention to expense and what I’m willing to invest money or my time with.
I’ll reach out to a few professionals in
the industry and we’ll try and have another roundtable for the 1st
quarter here in the next several weeks!
So today I thought we could talk a little about the sanitation position. Warehouse sanitation is quite a bit different
than Custodian or Janitorial jobs and can entail a broad range of
responsibilities. We’ve received a
couple of questions about the position this year and last week I had a long
time listener, actually she was probably our 1st listener and I’m
happy to say she’s caught every one of our episodes ask me when we’re we going
to talk about Sanitation, she wanted to know what all duties and
responsibilities it encompasses. I
thought we’d just kind of walk through a typical day at a distribution center
that I’m familiar with.
So, just like any light industrial position we’ll need to
arrive to work early, we don’t want to be the tardy person and miss any start
up or safety meetings. If we’re working
for a smaller facility, say 50k to 150k square ft and racked warehouse one of
our primary functions is going to be keep those front area trash cans empty and
clean. Man, they can fill up quick with
papers, little pieces of wood from broken pallets, maybe card board and shrink
wrap coming from the unloaders, lumpers and receivers. Speaking of cardboard and shrink wrap. A lot of facilities today may be recycling,
most of the buildings I visit each week have a bailer for their cardboard and
shrink wrap that’s taken off the trailers and containers. It’ll be our job as sanitation to separate
them out from the daily trash and compact them into bales using the
bailer. A large facility may have
separate compactors to keep up with the quantities coming off the docks. As with any recycling efforts it’s important
that the item, cardboard, shrink wrap or even just non-confidential papers are
clean and not wet or damp in any way. A
bail can get pretty rank smelling if it has mildew or mold growing in it! Beside it being the right thing to do, why do
companies spend the time, money and effort regarding recycling you might
ask? Because there’s revenue in it and
it can be well worth having the program.
If your facility is not capturing that revenue, even if it’ll take a
week to fill a trailer, typically 16 to 18 bails, I’d bring it up to your
management team. An idea to bring in
additional revenue vs paying someone to haul off such a large volume of trash
is definitely going to get us noticed in a positive manner! Got side tracked for a second, anyway, so
we’ve emptied all the trash cans, now we’ll hit the aisles checking for and
cleaning up any spills, sweeping around or maybe under the pallets, we’d all be
surprised at the amount of dust in our warehouses. Towards the end of the day we may have
certain areas we’ll mop, at least the high traffic areas. I know one small facility where the 2-sanitation
people will each clean around and under 1 dock plate a day. There’s 6 dock’s there so they cover each
door around twice a week that way. Even
our smaller facilities will have, or should have, a Master Sanitation Schedule
or a Duty list, something that outlines all our duties. Now this isn’t a Job Description. Our master sanitation schedule will list the
duties we’re expected to perform daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly. Whether we work for a small facility or an
800K warehouse we’ll be expected to follow this schedule, and it’s important
for any audits from the city, state or federal agencies that may be visiting us
from time to time. If your facility does not have or follow any type of
schedule, put something together for your manager. Those are the kinds of things that’ll get us
noticed! We’ve brought up something they
will know we need to be doing and just made their job easier!
Let’s talk about those larger facilities now. Pretty much the same duties as our smaller
buildings but on a grander scale, with many more employees so going forward
we’ll try and speak to the task themselves.
I looked up an old master sanitation list I had, it’ll give
us a pretty good sampling of the task that need to be performed.
Ok, on the daily list it has: There’s actually 58 items
listed, a few of them are,
Sweep entire dock area after the second shift.
Empty all front dock and cross aisle trash cans
Compact all 2nd shift trash and debris
Clean and mop area around the trash compactor, at least twice
daily.
Remove shrink wrap from bins and bale. This facility had a really good idea, they
build large wooden bins or boxes where the order selectors and forklift
drivers, and the night sanitation crew gather their used shrink wrap and fill
them up. It really helped keep all that
discarded shrink wrap off the floors and out of the aisles. Maybe something like that could work at your
facility? Anyway, so then it has mop
around the bailers twice a day.
It goes on to list Maintain all janitorial supplies in
designated areas and properly marked, clean all spills as noticed or
identified, Sweep all white lines daily, mop all white lines in cooler vault,
drive scrubber in dry and cooler areas at end of shift, dust racking for
cobwebs while in each aisle. I usually
see this one on the monthly list, but our schedule will usually be built
according to what the individual facilities needs are. It goes on to list, pick
up the breakroom areas as needed and mop at end of shift. Clean and mop restrooms twice a day. Clean repack and salvage areas and mop twice
a day. And it ends with spray down and clean or change dust mops at end of
shift & empty trash cans and shrink wrap boxes at end of day.
The weekly duties are listed as: there’s 31 of them so I’ll
highlight a few of them,
Pull pallets and sweep out from under them (rolling
assignments) That means we’d do something a fifth of the aisles each day, so
we’d have pulled and sweep them all by the end of the week! Clean under dock
plates, remove wood chips and debris. (rolling assignment)
Dust light fixtures for cobwebs, clean as necessary. Clean
pallet storage area, dust and mop. Clean and mop equipment charging area behind
chargers. As you can see, every area of
the warehouse, every square inch needs to be attended too each week.
The monthly schedule will get into some of the heavier or
deeper cleaning tasks. This schedule has
22 things on it, like power wash under dock plates, power wash receiving ramp,
scrub and sanitize fuel island. This one
seemed a little over board to me, but it requires all light fixtures are to be
wiped down with soap and water each month.
Again, the monthly schedule will be that deep cleaning of the less
traveled areas.
And then we have the Quarterly tasks: and there’s 17 items
here, touch up any yellow floor lines.
Paint all white line areas. Paint
all bollard posts – new paint. Power
wash cooler vault floor. Clean and
bleach all vault drains.
And this master cleaning schedule has 3 Annual tasks also,
power wash parking lots, touch up paint parking lines and dust and clean all
ceiling rafters and sprinkler piping.
That’s pretty through.
The sanitation position will teach us how to use chemicals
properly, dilution rates, and really hone our time management skills. As you can see, sanitation is not just
pushing a broom and emptying the trash. There’s
a lot of responsibility that goes along with it. Our job performance is going to be reviewed
by not only our bosses but possibly inspectors from the city, probably the fire
marshal, the state auditor will probably be stopping by and depending on our
industry we could see some federal agency coming in each year. Warehouse sanitation is a tough job, and one
of those great opportunity positions.
We’ll be working closely with and around every position in the
warehouse! That exposes us to a lot of
opportunity to learn other tasks, gives us that self-education to plan out our
goals with! The sanitation position kind
of wraps up my top three get our foot in the door tasks that are easy to get
hired onto and can take us to the position we’re wanting to get too. And sanitation makes a fantastic career
too. I just had a good friend retire
after 31 years with a company. He hired
on as a utility man in the sanitation department and retired as director of
building maintenance with 2 supervisors and a cleaning crew 17 under his
direction.
Well, there’s a little on the sanitation position and its
responsibilities. I’ve always felt it’s
a great opportunity position and can take us anywhere we’d like to go! Until next week, let’s all be on time, be
productive and be safe out there!
View all episodes
By Warehouse and Operations as a Career
4.8
1212 ratings
Welcome to Week 10 of 2019 and to Episode 128 of Warehouse
and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty T
Hawkins and WAOC is in Orlando Florida today.
I had an opportunity to visit a conference this week, I always enjoy
seeing old friends in the industry and learning something new every day! Speaking of learning and being that we’re
almost thru the 1st quarter, how’s everyone doing with their plans
and goals? I’m pretty much on track with
mine but I have made a couple of adjustments.
I’m looking at where I spend my money and my time much closer than I use
too. Going forward I’m going to pay much
more attention to expense and what I’m willing to invest money or my time with.
I’ll reach out to a few professionals in
the industry and we’ll try and have another roundtable for the 1st
quarter here in the next several weeks!
So today I thought we could talk a little about the sanitation position. Warehouse sanitation is quite a bit different
than Custodian or Janitorial jobs and can entail a broad range of
responsibilities. We’ve received a
couple of questions about the position this year and last week I had a long
time listener, actually she was probably our 1st listener and I’m
happy to say she’s caught every one of our episodes ask me when we’re we going
to talk about Sanitation, she wanted to know what all duties and
responsibilities it encompasses. I
thought we’d just kind of walk through a typical day at a distribution center
that I’m familiar with.
So, just like any light industrial position we’ll need to
arrive to work early, we don’t want to be the tardy person and miss any start
up or safety meetings. If we’re working
for a smaller facility, say 50k to 150k square ft and racked warehouse one of
our primary functions is going to be keep those front area trash cans empty and
clean. Man, they can fill up quick with
papers, little pieces of wood from broken pallets, maybe card board and shrink
wrap coming from the unloaders, lumpers and receivers. Speaking of cardboard and shrink wrap. A lot of facilities today may be recycling,
most of the buildings I visit each week have a bailer for their cardboard and
shrink wrap that’s taken off the trailers and containers. It’ll be our job as sanitation to separate
them out from the daily trash and compact them into bales using the
bailer. A large facility may have
separate compactors to keep up with the quantities coming off the docks. As with any recycling efforts it’s important
that the item, cardboard, shrink wrap or even just non-confidential papers are
clean and not wet or damp in any way. A
bail can get pretty rank smelling if it has mildew or mold growing in it! Beside it being the right thing to do, why do
companies spend the time, money and effort regarding recycling you might
ask? Because there’s revenue in it and
it can be well worth having the program.
If your facility is not capturing that revenue, even if it’ll take a
week to fill a trailer, typically 16 to 18 bails, I’d bring it up to your
management team. An idea to bring in
additional revenue vs paying someone to haul off such a large volume of trash
is definitely going to get us noticed in a positive manner! Got side tracked for a second, anyway, so
we’ve emptied all the trash cans, now we’ll hit the aisles checking for and
cleaning up any spills, sweeping around or maybe under the pallets, we’d all be
surprised at the amount of dust in our warehouses. Towards the end of the day we may have
certain areas we’ll mop, at least the high traffic areas. I know one small facility where the 2-sanitation
people will each clean around and under 1 dock plate a day. There’s 6 dock’s there so they cover each
door around twice a week that way. Even
our smaller facilities will have, or should have, a Master Sanitation Schedule
or a Duty list, something that outlines all our duties. Now this isn’t a Job Description. Our master sanitation schedule will list the
duties we’re expected to perform daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly. Whether we work for a small facility or an
800K warehouse we’ll be expected to follow this schedule, and it’s important
for any audits from the city, state or federal agencies that may be visiting us
from time to time. If your facility does not have or follow any type of
schedule, put something together for your manager. Those are the kinds of things that’ll get us
noticed! We’ve brought up something they
will know we need to be doing and just made their job easier!
Let’s talk about those larger facilities now. Pretty much the same duties as our smaller
buildings but on a grander scale, with many more employees so going forward
we’ll try and speak to the task themselves.
I looked up an old master sanitation list I had, it’ll give
us a pretty good sampling of the task that need to be performed.
Ok, on the daily list it has: There’s actually 58 items
listed, a few of them are,
Sweep entire dock area after the second shift.
Empty all front dock and cross aisle trash cans
Compact all 2nd shift trash and debris
Clean and mop area around the trash compactor, at least twice
daily.
Remove shrink wrap from bins and bale. This facility had a really good idea, they
build large wooden bins or boxes where the order selectors and forklift
drivers, and the night sanitation crew gather their used shrink wrap and fill
them up. It really helped keep all that
discarded shrink wrap off the floors and out of the aisles. Maybe something like that could work at your
facility? Anyway, so then it has mop
around the bailers twice a day.
It goes on to list Maintain all janitorial supplies in
designated areas and properly marked, clean all spills as noticed or
identified, Sweep all white lines daily, mop all white lines in cooler vault,
drive scrubber in dry and cooler areas at end of shift, dust racking for
cobwebs while in each aisle. I usually
see this one on the monthly list, but our schedule will usually be built
according to what the individual facilities needs are. It goes on to list, pick
up the breakroom areas as needed and mop at end of shift. Clean and mop restrooms twice a day. Clean repack and salvage areas and mop twice
a day. And it ends with spray down and clean or change dust mops at end of
shift & empty trash cans and shrink wrap boxes at end of day.
The weekly duties are listed as: there’s 31 of them so I’ll
highlight a few of them,
Pull pallets and sweep out from under them (rolling
assignments) That means we’d do something a fifth of the aisles each day, so
we’d have pulled and sweep them all by the end of the week! Clean under dock
plates, remove wood chips and debris. (rolling assignment)
Dust light fixtures for cobwebs, clean as necessary. Clean
pallet storage area, dust and mop. Clean and mop equipment charging area behind
chargers. As you can see, every area of
the warehouse, every square inch needs to be attended too each week.
The monthly schedule will get into some of the heavier or
deeper cleaning tasks. This schedule has
22 things on it, like power wash under dock plates, power wash receiving ramp,
scrub and sanitize fuel island. This one
seemed a little over board to me, but it requires all light fixtures are to be
wiped down with soap and water each month.
Again, the monthly schedule will be that deep cleaning of the less
traveled areas.
And then we have the Quarterly tasks: and there’s 17 items
here, touch up any yellow floor lines.
Paint all white line areas. Paint
all bollard posts – new paint. Power
wash cooler vault floor. Clean and
bleach all vault drains.
And this master cleaning schedule has 3 Annual tasks also,
power wash parking lots, touch up paint parking lines and dust and clean all
ceiling rafters and sprinkler piping.
That’s pretty through.
The sanitation position will teach us how to use chemicals
properly, dilution rates, and really hone our time management skills. As you can see, sanitation is not just
pushing a broom and emptying the trash. There’s
a lot of responsibility that goes along with it. Our job performance is going to be reviewed
by not only our bosses but possibly inspectors from the city, probably the fire
marshal, the state auditor will probably be stopping by and depending on our
industry we could see some federal agency coming in each year. Warehouse sanitation is a tough job, and one
of those great opportunity positions.
We’ll be working closely with and around every position in the
warehouse! That exposes us to a lot of
opportunity to learn other tasks, gives us that self-education to plan out our
goals with! The sanitation position kind
of wraps up my top three get our foot in the door tasks that are easy to get
hired onto and can take us to the position we’re wanting to get too. And sanitation makes a fantastic career
too. I just had a good friend retire
after 31 years with a company. He hired
on as a utility man in the sanitation department and retired as director of
building maintenance with 2 supervisors and a cleaning crew 17 under his
direction.
Well, there’s a little on the sanitation position and its
responsibilities. I’ve always felt it’s
a great opportunity position and can take us anywhere we’d like to go! Until next week, let’s all be on time, be
productive and be safe out there!