Barbara Kanegsberg

March 2017

Does Cleaning Experience Mean Inertia?

In a recent LinkedIn post, one of our colleagues, Randy Leighty, comments that “experience is a great teacher, but it can be an obstacle to innovation and continuous improvement.”  We ask: Is experience inherently an obstacle to improvement? Let’s start with a round of applause for inertia! Critical cleaning involves […]
October 2016

Consumer Products for Precision Cleaning – True or False

Never use a consumer/automotive cleaning agent for precision cleaning high-value product. True or false Quick! True or false. This is a timed test, and you will be graded. I hate true/false tests; there’s no room for nuance. In critical and precision cleaning, particularly of high-value product, most decisions are situational. […]
August 2016

“Perfect” Cleaning Process? New Guidance

High-value product has to be clean to function reliably; but nearly all manufacturing processes inevitably generate soils. You should know about an important new guidance document. While it is designed for medical device manufacturing, it should be of value to anyone concerned with cleaning and contamination control. “Tell me the […]
June 2016

“Native Advertising” Part 2 – Regulatory Agendas and More

Think critically; clean critically. To grow your manufacturing business, you must make well-informed, cost-effective decisions about critical product cleaning. Consider the source. Advertising influences our critical cleaning decisions – it’s unavoidable. In our March 2016 issue of Clean Source, we described the pervasive influence of native advertising. We showed you […]
May 2016

Salad Dressing and “Layered” Cocktails

During a recent cleaning and chemistry course, a student asked a thought-provoking question about solubility, miscibility, and cocktail hour.  I explained that some liquids, like oil and water, are immiscible. That is, they don’t form a “single phase;” the oil is on top of the water. The observant student wondered […]
March 2016

Think Critically, Clean Critically – “Native Advertising” Part 1

To me, “native advertising” evokes the cast of “Madmen” in vintage business suits and starched white shirts sitting cross-legged, somberly thumping on bongo drums with one hand and hoisting diet sodas with the other. Native advertising is not exotic; it is an example of how the line between fact and […]
February 2016

Detecting Contamination with Witness Samples

Process monitoring takes more and more time; and it costs more and more money.  Examples include air in the room and air that is released to the environment, water before during and at the end of the process, assorted liquid chemicals for cleaning, metalworking fluids, other process chemicals, process gasses, […]
January 2016

Be Selfish – Conserve Water

Cousin Samantha (Sam) insisted, “you’ve got to take a look at Lake Mendocino; it will change your whole outlook.” We were in Northern California for a winter break.  I groaned inwardly. I know about the drought in California. I wanted to do a wine tasting, not look at a lake.  […]
October 2015

Location, Location, Location – Electronics Assembly

Location means everything when you’re buying or selling a house. Location is also important in critical cleaning, especially with line-of-sight cleaning. In line-of-sight cleaning, the cleaning force is directionally-aimed at the part or component. Do you use line-of-sight cleaning?  Most electronics assemblers remove flux and other residual soils using in-line […]
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