Rapid deployment of the cleanroom cleaner limits damage after a power failure

The call reached Timo Speck on a Friday around noon: After a prolonged power outage, the 1,300-square-meter cleanroom of a medical technology manufacturer in Baden-Württemberg was contaminated, and production came to a halt. "How quickly can you clean the room again?" asked the production manager. "By Sunday evening, we will be done," promised Speck, managing director of Mikroclean GmbH, and assembled a team of his employees for the weekend shift within a few hours.

"Fortunately, we are equipped for such cases," says Speck. The necessary equipment is always ready in his company's warehouse in Grafenberg, about 30 kilometers south of Stuttgart: 100 sterile coveralls, 500 cleanroom coveralls, 25,000 cleanroom cloths, 300 sterile mop covers, 1,000 cleanroom mop covers, and 7,000 sterile cloths — "no other company in the South German region offers this," Speck states proudly.

When he and his team arrived at the customer site at eight o'clock on Saturday morning, the HVAC technicians had already completed their work, and the necessary pressure in the cleanroom was restored. Now, it was about removing particles from roughly 4,000 square meters of floors, ceilings, and walls, which had been blown into the cleanroom due to the lack of pressure from outside. Each mop cover in the GMP Class D cleanroom covered about 15 square meters, totaling more than 260 covers. Several dozen coveralls for the staff were also used. "In total, our equipment filled a small van to the roof," reports Speck.

All of his employees have extensive experience in cleaning cleanrooms and are regularly trained both internally and externally. "Therefore, no special briefing is necessary beyond the company-specific procedures," says the founder and managing director of Mikroclean. He himself has ten years of practical experience and has been running his own company since 2011. Currently, around 100 regular customers rely on his expertise and that of his approximately 25 employees for initial, interval, and maintenance cleaning, as well as in-house training. "Thanks to our decentralized structure, we can operate nationwide as well as in Austria and Switzerland," says Speck.

This experience and flexibility also benefited the emergency client. Timo Speck studied the company's SOP report, which contains all essential information about the disinfectants to be used and the procedures. After deploying personnel and materials into the cleanroom, his team got to work. They systematically removed harmful particles from each square meter, allowing them to give the all-clear on Sunday afternoon: "Floor, ceiling, and walls again meet all the requirements of GMP Class D." The final part of the work, disinfecting the tables and production equipment previously covered with cleanroom foil, was carried out by the client's staff the next day, so that normal production could resume from Tuesday.

Incidents leading to contamination in cleanrooms, says Timo Speck, can never be completely avoided. "But we can ensure that damages caused by production outages are minimized as much as possible. That’s what we’re here for."