Three Tips to Make Sure Your Cleanroom Workflow is Optimized

Keeping your clean room operating with high efficiency can dramatically improve not only the efficiency of your Research and Development or manufacturing but it will help your company’s yield. Here are some great tips to help you make sure your clean room can operate with a high efficiency.

Proper Design and frequent review of the Workflow: Starting with an efficient design is key. Making sure the people that will be using the room have a say in how the flow will be set up along with using the best practices of your industry will improve the chances your clean room will be designed to ensure the workflow will be efficient. Some times the Architects who set up the layout of the clean room may not realize small changes that can affect the workflow. These are tips and ideas that would come mainly from the people who have experience being in the room and using it to work. Size of the cleanroom is one potential issue if not planned for. A room that is too small for the amount of people that will need to be inside is a sure way to cost your business more money that it needs to. Having a periodic review of workflow efficiency to ensure it is working properly or if there are changes that need to be made will also help make sure your clean room is contributing to your business and not detracting from your business.

Using proper transfer tools and multi room design: It is common that the workflow of your clean room will require different parts of your process to be separated out to prevent contamination or have different requirements or regulations that need to be met. This transfer of items between these rooms are a common area that can cause disruptions and slow downs in your operations. An example of this is if one room is required to have negative air pressure while the adjoining room needs to have positive air pressure. The transition between them may need to be a small room or buffer area/airlock that will allow the normalization of air pressure between the rooms to prevent contamination. Not having this airlock can cost you in having to redesign your space and remodel everything plus downtime of your rooms. Other methods such as passthrough sections for small products, or product airlocks are other examples to achieve this task.

Proper Training of employees: Making sure you have a proper training program to help the employees use the room appropriately and understand the resources they will have can save you in re-training and down time costs later on. Make sure your employees know how to use the room the right way as well as handle waste and transfers of samples. Explain the guidelines and standards that need to be met so they understand why they need to do certain things in certain ways. Help them understand by creating effective presentations and even consider walk throughs or videos of the processes.