Planning Ultraclean Systems

When designing, planning and optimizing clean manufacturing areas, many companies are unsure of the level of cleanliness they need to attain a specific product quality and what steps are required. Investments and measures have to be carefully planned in order to avoid generating high costs and complex manufacturing conditions caused by implementing cleanliness technology in the wrong place which have no measurable effect on product cleanliness.

Whether a cleanroom or cleanliness zone is required, the 30 years of experience we have gained in numerous aspects of manufacturing under clean or ultraclean conditions, combined with our neutral approach that is independent of the solution, enables Fraunhofer IPA to assist industry with a wide range of planning and optimization tasks:

• Planning clean manufacturing environments, e.g. by selecting the necessary air cleanliness classes or cleanliness grades, developing room and ventilation concepts, designing material and staff flows from the aspect of cleanliness or drafting logistics and packaging concepts. Our projects range from developing fully-equipped cleanliness laboratories for the automotive industry through high-end assembly cleanrooms for space missions to large-scale manufacturing environments for LED production.
• Designing manufacturing systems and components (cleanliness-suitable equipment design), taking quality factors into account, e.g. particle emission, electrostatic characteristics (ESD), the properties of materials to generate particles or release volatile substances, so-called airborne molecular contamination (AMC). Optimizing the airflow guidance of systems and in rooms with the aid of simulation (Computer Fluid Dynamics) can also have a major influence on cleanliness.
• Even after a clean or ultraclean manufacturing environment has been completed, Fraunhofer IPA continues to provide assistance if it is needed, e.g. by teaching workers how to conduct themselves correctly in a cleanroom or clean environment - either in the institute’s reference cleanrooms or on-site at the customer’s.
• Furthermore, our expertise in planning, conceiving and designing production facilities, equipment and processes can also be applied to optimize existing facilities and devices. These optimizations are aided by our comprehensive range of measuring equipment and the specific methods we use to detect, analyze and evaluate sources of contamination.