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Keeping your brands reputation 'stainless'
It can’t be bought, it can only be grown. It takes years to create, yet can be destroyed in minutes. It’s your brand’s reputation, of course. In the food or pharmacy sectors, just one safety incident and product recall can do untold reputational damage. But a significant step towards protecting your most valuable brand asset is – literally – in your hands.
The reputational repercussions and financial costs – through lost production and lost sales – of a product recall due to a product safety issue are potentially enormous. The losses to the bottom line can be recouped, eventually. Your brand will take far, far longer to recover.
So wouldn’t you like to know one way you can reduce the risk of that kind of nightmare scenario?
Maintaining like with like
Your production process may be clean and hygienic, and meet the highest safety standards. But what if there’s a weak link? And what if the thing that keeps your production running could be the same thing that shuts it down for a safety breach?
The potential problem is hiding in plain sight: in the toolboxes of your production and maintenance engineers.
Your production equipment is manufactured from stainless steel for the essential qualities it provides: corrosion and chemical resistance.
However, if your maintenance engineers are driving stainless steel screws or tightening stainless steel nuts with standard ferrous tools, then it won’t be long before even the stainless steel becomes liable to corrosion. You then have a potential source of product contamination, present in the production line itself.
Every ordinary steel spanner, or screwdriver, or wrench or pair of pliers used by your engineers is a possible source of contamination from ferrous particles. And those same tools are also home to millions of microbes. Microbes which are transferred to your production line every time the tools come into contact with it.
The solution is to choose tools forged from stainless steel, by manufacturers such as Bahco and Facom.
Every ordinary steel spanner, or screwdriver, or wrench or pair of pliers used by your engineers is a possible source of contamination from ferrous particles. And those same tools are also home to millions of microbes. Microbes which are transferred to your production line every time the tools come into contact with it.
The solution is to choose tools forged from stainless steel, by manufacturers such as Bahco and Facom.
Space in your toolbox
Stainless steel is not just rustproof, but also acid-resistant. Stainless steel tools don’t create corrosion particles which can transfer to food or pharmaceutical products. And just as importantly, because they can be fully heat-sterilised after every use, they don’t carry microbes (or the Covid virus) which could find their way onto you production line, into your products, and ultimately to your consumers.
In addition, Bahco stainless steel tools are made with steel specially toughened using an ice hardening process developed by NASA and the European Space Agency.
All stainless steel tools last far longer than ordinary steel versions. Steel toughened with space technology lasts longer still.
Controlling contaminants – and tools
Eliminating microbe and rust contamination with stainless steel tools is one aspect of maintaining food and pharmacological safety and your brand’s reputation. But there are also much larger foreign bodies which have been known to find their way into the production process with potentially catastrophic results: the tools themselves.
That’s why a Tool Control System is essential for keeping track of the location of tools, and ensuring they are all accounted for at the end of every shift.
To maintain hygiene, stainless steel tools can be steam cleaned or jet washed before they are moved from one production area to another. If they are also stored in a stainless steel cabinet, that can be cleaned in the same way. And with Bahco Altuglass® Food Contact sheet inlays, the tool control system can also undergo steam or other rigorous cleaning.
With laser-cut templates for each tool required, the inlays are specially designed to meet the latest EU and other European national regulations: ensuring microbes don’t have a home, but your tools all have their place.
For more information on Tool solutions and to get in touch with one of our ERIKS Tool Specialists, please contact your local ERIKS Service Centre, who will be happy to discuss your options.
#Bahco #ERIKS #LetsMakeIndustryWorkBetter #StainlessSteel #Safety #Clean #Innovation
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