Articles & Perspectives

How Poor Sanitation Design Raises Labor Costs

4 minute read

When sanitation labor costs climb, staffing is the obvious place to look. But how long a cleaning job takes is shaped by the design of the equipment and facility long before the crew shows up. Guards that are hard to remove, crevices a brush can’t reach, and surfaces where water pools add minutes to every teardown, cleaning, inspection, and startup. Those minutes repeat every shift, on every line, and they add up to significant labor cost, longer downtime, and greater food safety risk.

Key Takeaways

• Sanitation labor costs depend on how equipment and facilities are designed, not just on staffing levels.
• Design-driven delays add up at every stage of the cleaning cycle (teardown, cleaning, inspection, and startup) and repeat every shift, on every line.
• Purchase price may be only 10% to 15% of an equipment’s lifecycle cost. Operation, maintenance, and sanitation make up the rest.
• Hard-to-clean surfaces also raise food safety risk. One study found biofilm on 17% of sampled surfaces even after cleaning and disinfection.
• The best place to start is timing each stage of your sanitation cycle and asking the crews who clean the equipment every day.

What Is Sanitary Design in Food Manufacturing?

Sanitary, or hygienic, design is the practice of designing food processing equipment and facilities so they can be cleaned, sanitized, inspected, and maintained effectively and efficiently. In practice, that means minimizing hard-to-clean areas, giving access to food-contact surfaces, avoiding spots where water or product can accumulate, and simplifying disassembly and reassembly. Poor design does the opposite, and sanitation crews pay for it in time.

How Does Poor Sanitation Design Increase Labor Costs?

Poor sanitation design adds unnecessary work to routine cleaning procedures. Because sanitation happens every shift, even small inefficiencies compound across production lines and facilities.

The extra time shows up at every stage of the sanitation cycle:

• Teardown and reassembly: Components that are difficult to remove or put back extend the sanitation window at both ends of the job.
• Cleaning: Crevices, hollow areas, and tight spaces require extra manual scrubbing, and poor drainage or equipment geometry leaves water and product that crews must keep returning to.
• Inspection: Limited visibility makes cleanliness harder to verify, and areas that fail inspection mean crews clean and sanitize again.
• Startup: Longer sanitation cycles delay the line and tie up both sanitation and production labor.

Saving two hours of cleaning time per day at $20 per hour, five days a week, adds up to more than $10,000 a year. Multiply that across several lines or facilities, and sanitary design becomes a major operational cost.

Related Case Study: Building an Enterprise In-House Sanitation Program Framework

What Are the Hidden Costs of Difficult-to-Clean Equipment?

Sanitation labor is only part of the bill. Longer cleaning windows cut into production time, increase water and chemical use, complicate maintenance, and delay startup.

That’s why judging equipment on purchase price alone can be misleading. The initial price may represent only 10% to 15% of its total lifecycle cost, while ongoing operation, maintenance, and sanitation can account for the remaining 85% to 90%.

Poor design can also increase food safety risk. Scratches, cracks, grooves, pits, and other hard-to-clean areas can shelter microorganisms from cleaning actions and disinfectants, allowing contamination to persist despite routine sanitation.

Even after cleaning and disinfection, researchers found evidence of biofilm on 17% of surfaces sampled across food manufacturing facilities.

What Sanitation Design Problems Should Food Manufacturers Look For?

One of the most useful checks is comparison: if similar production lines take significantly different amounts of time to clean, the slower line deserves a design review. Other warning signs include recurring buildup in the same spots, excessive teardown, standing water, hard-to-access food-contact surfaces, frequent pre-operational inspection failures, and lengthy cleaning windows.

Ask the people who clean the equipment every day. They know where crews lose time, which components are hardest to reach, and which areas need repeat cleaning.

“When equipment is difficult to clean, you’re not just adding time to sanitation. You’re adding labor, extending downtime, and creating more opportunities for inconsistency. Good sanitary design removes those barriers so teams can clean effectively without unnecessary work.” – Geoff Olsen, Supply Chain & Operations Practice Director at Catena Solutions

Related Case Study: Bringing Consistency and Ownership to a Sanitation Program

How Can Food Plants Reduce Sanitation Labor Costs?

Start by finding out where the time actually goes. Observe cleaning procedures, review equipment for hygienic design issues, and time each stage: teardown, cleaning, inspection, reassembly, and startup. The stages that run longest, or vary most between similar lines, are the best places to look first.

From there, improvements range from modifying existing equipment to writing sanitary design requirements into future capital purchases. Options include eliminating harborage points, improving drainage and accessibility, standardizing sanitation procedures, and redesigning workflows.

The goal isn’t to make crews clean faster at the expense of food safety. It’s to remove unnecessary work so teams can reach the required level of cleanliness more efficiently and consistently.

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FAQs About Sanitation Design

How does poor sanitation design increase labor costs?

It makes equipment harder and slower to disassemble, clean, inspect, and reassemble. Those extra minutes repeat every shift and across every line, extending sanitation windows and increasing labor hours.

What are common signs of poor sanitary design?

Common signs include hard-to-reach surfaces, standing water, recurring buildup, difficult teardown, repeated pre-operational inspection failures, and cleaning that requires excessive manual labor.

Can better sanitary design reduce cleaning time?

Yes. Equipment built for accessibility, drainage, and easier disassembly removes unnecessary sanitation tasks while helping teams meet food safety requirements.

How can food manufacturers improve sanitary design?

Assess existing equipment and sanitation workflows, identify recurring cleaning problems, make targeted modifications, and build hygienic design standards into future equipment and facility purchases.