Clean room manufacturers deal in trust as much as they do in clean rooms. I remember hearing once that the medical profession is the only profession from which perfection is always demanded. At the time I heard that, it seemed like a sensible enough declaration. When medical professionals and technology are unreliable, people can suffer for it. But you don’t have to think too hard before you can think of other examples of professions in which failure is not an option. You don’t want the gum you chew to be contaminated with poison. You don’t want the computer you use to shock you with electricity. You don’t want the cleanroom in which you manufacture sensitive parts to be compromised by particulates. Because so many aspects of our economy have become so developed, our sense of entitlement to perfection has become quite developed as well.

Don’t think that I’m using the phrase “sense of entitlement” in a negative light. Quite the opposite – if a clean room company calls itself a clean room company, its clean rooms had better be clean. Assuming I’m right about the universal sense of entitlement to perfection, it is important to point out that our expectations are often higher or lower within certain contexts. But when it comes to clean rooms, a company has to be able to rely on the fact that its clean room manufacturer did good work and that their product will perform as advertised. A class 100 clean room must be able to live up to its class 100 rating consistently and without deviation. That’s why the Fed standard and the ISO standards were developed in the first place: to give clean room users an idea of what to expect from the clean rooms they use. Because companies rely on their clean rooms not to fail, clean room manufacturers have a big responsibility and play an important role in industry.