It’s time to take care of any last-minute maintenance recommendations before many food processors enter their busiest season, whether it’s the spring flush for dairies or the crush for fruit processors.

Jim Munch explains why it’s important to invest in maintenance and training at the right time to improve production and the bottom line.

Here are 10 maintenance recommendations from Caloris to check out before your production line goes into overdrive:

1. Know when to change your dairy membranes — In this article, we’ll walk you through the signs and symptoms that let you know it’s time.
2. Know membrane CIP best practices — CIP is your largest maintenance item when it comes to your membranes.
3. Reduce caustic consumption with a filtration system — Reducing caustic consumption in dairy plants can show attractive ROI resulting from a reduction of caustic purchases and a corresponding reduction in waste treatment costs by keeping solids from going down the drain.
4. Evaluate your entire CIP regimen — Your CIP regimen can have an effect on both efficiency and product quality. Straying from the prescribed procedure is not recommended.
5. Check the status of your cooling towers before the summer season — Often overlooked, under-performing evaporative cooling towers should be replaced to restore evaporator capacity.
6. Diagnose and fix chronic evaporator tube fouling — If your falling film evaporator experiences regular tube fouling to the point where manual cleaning is necessary, the cause can be identified and eliminated.
7. Health check-up for your calandria — Cracks and other defects can lead to inefficiency on your production line.
8. Are leaky vacuum vessels costing you money? Leaky vacuum vessels can be diagnosed to restore capacity, eliminate thermal damage to product and improve CIP performance.
9. Spray dryer safety systems maintenance — The maintenance and testing of these safety systems ensures a safe working environment for your employees and reliability of your production line.
10. Troubleshooting baghouse problems — If you are experiencing baghouse problems in your spray dryer, here is a list of items to check to diagnose the issue.

Ready to Tackle These Maintenance Recommendations?

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Need assistance with determining priorities for maintenance recommendations in your plant? Contact Caloris at 410-822-6900 or send email to problem.solved@caloris.com to schedule an assessment of your production system or other assistance.