Testing laboratory

EHEDG Authorised Testing Laboratory

The Società Italiana per l’Innovazione nell’Industria Alimentare has set up and equipped a test laboratory specialized in cleanability tests.

Our laboratory, unique in Italy, is an “Authorized Testing Laboratory” (ATL) of EHEDG for the execution of the test procedure based on the document EHEDG Doc.2.

The results of this test are used, in addition to other evaluations and evidences, for the purposes of EHEDG certification.

For more information, visit www.ehedg.org.

 

Meaning of accreditation

The SIIIA Srl test laboratory operates in compliance with the UNI CEI EN ISO / ICE 17025 standard and is accredited by ACCREDIA with accreditation number 1800.

Accreditation ensures that the Laboratory has all the requirements required by the UNI CEI EN ISO / IEC 17025 standard to carry out its own testing activity.

Accreditation is the certification, by an institution that acts as guarantor super partes, of the competence, independence and impartiality of the certification, inspection and verification bodies, and of the test and calibration laboratories.

The bodies and laboratories verify products, services, management systems or professional figures, and certify their compliance with the standards, voluntary and mandatory, through certification and inspection, testing and calibration activities.

The accreditation of the bodies and laboratories gives the certificates of conformity and calibration, and the test and inspection reports released on the market, a high degree of reliability in terms of quality and safety of the goods and services subjected to verification, and guarantees its recognition on international markets.

Across the world, accreditation is carried out on the basis of the international standard ISO / IEC 17011. Within the European Union, the European Regulation 765/2008 provides that each member state appoints its own national single accreditation body and has conferred for the first time to this activity a legal status, recognizing it as an expression of public authority. In Italy the single accreditation body designated by the government is Accredia. Accredia is a member of the Mutual Recognition Agreements EA, IAF and ILAC.

Principle of the test procedure

The procedure applies to closed equipment of modest size such as, for example but not limited to, valves, pumps, sensors, piping, heat exchangers, homogenizers, connections, housing for filters.

In a nutshell, Tte procedure includes the following phases: soiling, drying, in-place cleaning, detection of residual soil.

The particular microscopic size indicator (bacterial spores) used for soiling and the particular residue detection technique make this method able to highlight internal areas that are difficult to clean and that may need to be redesigned.

In order to identify the residual soil, the tested equipment is filled with an agar medium, and then incubated at a specific temperature, so as to favor the germination of the residual spores. The microbial metabolism will cause, in the areas of presence of residues, a color change, from violet to yellow, of the agarized culture medium, allowing, not only the determination of the degree of cleanability, but also the precise location of the critical areas.

The entire procedure is applied simultaneously to the object being tested and a reference pipe. The result is determined in a comparative way with respect to the reference pipe.

Policy for quality, impartiality and confidentiality

The Laboratory, in compliance with the UNI CEI EN ISO 17025 standard, adopts a quality policy, in which particular emphasis is given to its commitment to impartiality and confidentiality. This policy is available to interested parties for consultation.

Complaints

The Laboratory provides for the stakeholders the possibility of extending a complaint and guarantees that such complaint will be handled according to a specific procedure. This procedure is available to interested parties for consultation.