Hearing the word Adenosine Triphosphate or well known as ATP, our mind would go straight to thinking ‘it must be something related to sanitation’.

Most industries are familiar with ATP testing as one of the easiest methods in verifying your sanitation or cleaning procedures. What kind of industries and where they’re typically implementing it? It varies from Hospitality, Food and Beverages, Dairy Processing, Feed and Grain Processing. Each industries implemented the ATP Testing procedures mainly to monitor their cleaning or sanitation process in order to achieve the standard of cleanliness of each facility and services.

Based on the trials and test run by these varieties of companies, we can summarize the best practice to receive the most effective result of the test as below:

1. Collaborate with your team regarding the testing procedures and to help you identify the most relevant test points
2. Mapping the entire facilities and divides them into zones based on the critical level
3. Determine the most suitable testing scheme for your facilities
4. Considering the challenges of surface cleaning should be taken into evaluation process
5. Regular monitoring to the most critical zone of your facility
6. Compile all the ATP result to evaluate the overall process to help you determine the effectiveness your cleaning process and decrease your overall risk

The main reason most industries are using ATP testing procedures is to meet regulations and policies each industry or organization need to adhere. Other than compliance to these policies, the ATP test is used to increased accuracy and proof the effectiveness of their cleaning and sanitation process and to help them establish new information and techniques of the existing cleaning procedures. Another crucial points are to avoid outbreaks and to show the company’s commitment to quality.

Building and creating the cleaning procedures would be useless without maintaining the continuity of the program. In order to keep the continuity, therefore the company needs to establish a routine for the ATP program. Tracking and creating trend over the result taken from the test also helps company to create a better and faster Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA) and one of the usaha to Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) compliance for the process.