Sanitation Supervisor

Job Title:

Sanitation Supervisor Job Description

The Sanitation Supervisor leads a small sanitation team and works hands-on to clean and sanitize food-processing equipment, utensils, rooms, and support areas in a high-care food manufacturing environment. This role is responsible for ensuring that all sanitation tasks are completed safely, thoroughly, and on time, and for turning over clean, inspection-ready equipment and rooms to Quality and Production each day. The position is primarily plant-floor based, requiring active involvement in assigning work, performing sanitation tasks, inspecting results, coaching team members, completing records, and responding promptly to sanitation or food-safety issues.

• Lead, schedule, and work alongside one or two sanitation employees, assigning daily tasks and verifying that all work is completed safely, correctly, and on time.

• Disassemble, clean, sanitize, inspect, and reassemble processing and packaging equipment as trained and authorized, including mixers, kettles, pumps, transfer hoses and piping, fillers, conveyors, utensils, tanks, floors, walls, drains, coolers, and support areas.

• Ensure fillers, pumps, transfer hoses, gaskets, O-rings, valves, fittings, and other product-contact components are disassembled to the required level, inspected for condition and residue, thoroughly cleaned and sanitized, and correctly reassembled before release.

• Execute approved wet-cleaning, dry-pickup, CIP, COP, and manual-cleaning procedures while preventing splash, aerosol, drainage, and cross-contamination risks.

• Follow and enforce sanitation standard operating procedures (SSOPs), the Master Sanitation Schedule (MSS), periodic equipment cleaning (PEC), periodic infrastructure cleaning (PIC), Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), hygienic zoning, allergen controls, and color-coded tool requirements.

• Ensure safe selection, labeling, mixing, concentration checks, application, contact time, rinsing, and storage of cleaning chemicals in accordance with procedures, product labels, Safety Data Sheets (SDS), and training.

• Follow and enforce safety rules related to PPE, Lockout/Tagout, machine guarding, ladders, electrical safety, hot water, compressed air, and other sanitation safety requirements, and immediately report unsafe conditions, injuries, near misses, equipment damage, leaks, or chemical concerns.

• Conduct detailed self-inspections and support formal pre-operational inspections, promptly correct deficiencies, and notify Quality when equipment and areas are ready for release.

• Exercise the authority and responsibility to stop sanitation activities or delay turnover to Production when equipment or the processing environment does not meet established sanitation or food-safety requirements, while recognizing that final pre-operational release remains the responsibility of Quality.

• Complete all required sanitation records accurately and in real time, including SSOP signoffs, MSS tasks, chemical checks, corrective actions, re-cleaning activities, and shift handoff notes.

• Support sanitation verification and validation activities such as visual inspections, ATP testing, protein or allergen swabbing, and microbiological or environmental sampling as directed by Quality.

• Maintain heightened control of conditions that can support Listeria harborage or movement within the refrigerated ready-to-eat environment, including standing water, condensation, drains, damaged surfaces, equipment niches, wheels and footwear, hoses, cleaning tools, and uncontrolled movement between hygiene zones.

• Protect the ready-to-eat environment by controlling employee, tool, footwear, water, waste, and equipment movement between raw, low-hygiene, and high-care zones.

• Support allergen…