A key to productive and competitive manufacturing is to do the right cleaning steps at the correct point in the manufacturing process. Maybe you need less cleaning, but smarter cleaning. Cleaning is removing soil; soil is matter out of place. We hear a lot of terms for cleaning including manufacturing cleaning, industrial cleaning, defluxing, dewaxing, degreasing, deoiling, surface preparation, contaminant removal, precision cleaning and critical cleaning. For years we’ve heard about precision cleaning as contrasted from general cleaning or metals cleaning. Many people associate precision cleaning with processes conducted in cleanrooms or some other controlled environment. Precision cleaning has been called removing soil from parts that look pretty clean to begin with or cleaning associated with formal surface metrics or “final assembly cleaning.”
