Cleanroom challenges
What keeps Cleanliness engineers awake at night? What challenges do they face in this market and what problems do they encounter? We delved into this industry and listed the 7 biggest challenges.
Human beings
One of the most significant challenges for cleanrooms is human contamination. It’s important to note that humans are responsible for approximately 80% of cleanroom contamination. The fewer people present in the cleanroom, the less dust and particulate matter is introduced into this controlled environment.
When individuals enter the cleanroom, they become the primary source of contamination. Measures such as air showers and sticky mats are implemented to mitigate this pollution. These tools help remove particles from personnel before they enter the cleanroom, significantly reducing the potential for contamination.
Moreover, maintaining the cleanliness of entryways and changing rooms is crucial. By ensuring these areas remain clean, you can significantly reduce the amount of dust and other particulates that might otherwise be carried into the cleanroom. By focusing on these areas, companies that clean cleanrooms can make a substantial impact on reducing contamination and improving the overall cleanliness and efficiency of these critical environments.
High downtime costs
The moment cleaning is required in a cleanroom, production temporarily comes to a halt. This costs 100s of thousands of dollars per hour. This is one of the biggest challenges of Cleanrooms and one of the main reasons to opt for more efficient cleaning solutions. The faster everything is clean, the faster production can restart and the more money you can save.
Cleanroom cleaning companies play a vital role in minimizing downtime costs. By using efficient cleaning methods and mechanical solutions, production can restart faster, saving significant costs.
Airborne particle contamination
Airborne particle contamination, or simply put pollution in the air, is a challenge for every Cleanroom. Depending on the ISO class of the Cleanroom, the maximum number of particles/m3 in the air is allowed. Incidentally, in medical and pharmaceutical Cleanrooms it is mainly focused on the biological, live contamination (bacteria, viruses and phages) that is important to keep low, but in SEMICON it is just as much about “dead” contamination.
People are the most contaminated thing you can put in a Cleanroom and thus bring the most risk of contamination to products being produced. With the risk of damaging wafers or batches of medicines, resulting in very high costs. The fewer people you have to put into a Cleanroom to clean, for example, the less risk of contamination. It is therefore a great advantage that with our mechanical solutions you can clean a Cleanroom faster than if you were to clean manually with wipes or mops. Instead of sending several people into the Cleanroom to clean everything in the shortest possible time, you can now clean everything with fewer people and faster. Win-win!
Cleaning staff shortages
In many parts of the world (especially in the West) we are facing staff shortages and rising personnel costs. This challenge is even more pronounced in the cleanroom industry because individuals must undergo specialized training to clean a cleanroom.
Furthermore, the work involved in cleanroom maintenance is physically demanding and often performed under warm conditions. The tasks must be carried out according to specific protocols, adding another layer of complexity. Not everyone is capable of meeting these stringent requirements.
This situation underscores the importance of investing in staff training and development, as well as creating a work environment that values and supports its employees. By doing so, companies can help ensure they have a reliable, skilled workforce ready to meet the unique demands of cleanroom cleaning. Additionally, exploring technological solutions, such as automation, could also help alleviate some of these challenges.
Product surface cleanliness
In Cleanrooms, deposition refers to the amount of dust particles on surfaces (floors, products, machines, etc.). By measuring the number of particles per cm2, you can determine what ISO class the product cleanliness falls into. And that ISO class in turn largely determines what requirements everything in that Cleanroom must meet.
It is a challenge to keep the amount of deposition as low as possible. Timely and thorough cleaning plays a crucial role in this.
Lead and Copper particles
In SEMICON Cleanrooms, the materials lead and copper are absolutely prohibited. This is one of the main reasons why it is so difficult to switch from manual cleaning to machine cleaning.
Did you know that SAFE-T-IMOP and SAFE-T-VAC do not emit any lead or copper?
High cleaning costs
Cleaning in Cleanrooms is more expensive than in other environments because it requires special equipment. You can't just use standard wipes and cleaning materials: the same goes for machines. They have to meet all kinds of high standards.
The staff that cleans Cleanrooms is also more expensive than an ordinary cleaner, because they have to be trained specifically on Cleanrooms.
