Maintenance shop is connected to production by a shared hallway. Clothes and shoes are the same, but maintenance techs are trained to change to clean clothes if they get dirty, and we have stick mats for shoes prior to leaving the maintenance shop. We clean parts before returning to products, but sanitizing is not something we do currently.
My process is food packaging; large rolls of printed film that make up food pouches and lids. My production area is large printing presses and laminator. Not the cleanest environment, but also lower risk than a raw food facility. The only surfaces we sanitize are product contact surfaces like cylinders, rollers, and roll handling equipment. The rest of the areas is just kept free of dust and debris to prevent foreign material contamination.
I would still have my maintenance techs wearing hairnets in the maintenance shop, but I wouldn't have them wash hands prior to entering the shop. They would wash prior to entering production, but not prior to entering the maintenance shop. Doesn't make sense to me to have them wash before when they are just going to get dirty as soon as they start working.
How are others doing this? Are your shops immaculate and sanitized? How do you rebuild a grease filled gear box and not get you and the work area a mess? Do you have your guys washing prior to entering the shop and doing such messy work?
I'm about to spend big money installing hand washing stations and want to make sure I'm doing this right. Don't want to fail my audit and then have to relocate a bunch of plumbing.