Setting up your chemicals

Your chemical register is the list of cleaning and sanitation products you use in the plant, and the safety data sheets that go with them. It's one of the first things an inspector asks to see, and one of the easiest to let go stale — suppliers reissue safety data sheets and nobody notices until the file on record is three revisions behind.

Open Chemicals under Inventory in the main menu.

Registering a chemical

Select Add chemical. The name is what matters most — record it the way it appears on the drum, including concentration, so nobody has to guess which product is meant. "Peracetic acid 5% v/v" is a useful name; "sanitizer" isn't.

Then record what it is and where it's used:

• Purpose — sanitizer, disinfectant, detergent, acid cleaner, allergen cleaner, CIP / COP, degreaser, descaler, and so on. This is what makes the register readable at a glance.
• Supplier, and the supplier's product code.
• Where it's used — for example, a specific CIP loop.
• Use concentration — for example, 200 ppm or 5% v/v.
• Pack size, and the lot currently on the shelf, which pre-fills your usage log.
• Notes — storage location and handling reminders, for whoever picks the drum up.

The safety data sheet

Each chemical has a Safety data sheet (SDS) section. Upload the sheet your supplier provided and record its expiry date — the date by which you should have obtained a fresh one.

Record the hazard class too. Crown can look this up against a reference of known chemicals, or you can transcribe it from the sheet itself, noting which source you used.

Keeping sheets current

The chemical list filters on exactly the states that cause problems:

• Missing SDS file — registered, but no sheet uploaded.
• No expiry date — a sheet on file with no review date.
• SDS expired — past its date.
• SDS expiring soon — inside 30 days.
• SDS current — nothing to do.

Run through Missing SDS file and No expiry date once after your initial setup, and the register largely maintains itself after that.

Crown QMSThe chemical register

Where chemicals show up elsewhere

• Monitoring checks — the sanitizer you record on a sanitation event comes from this register. See Logging monitoring checks.
• Your preventive control plan — safety data sheets ride along as an appendix on the PCP download, so the plan and its supporting sheets travel as one file. See Your preventive control plan document.

What's next

Chemicals underpin your sanitation program. See Prerequisite programs for how those programs are set up and activated.