Happy Birthday!
Lisa A. Karter
Chief Editor
As the new Chief Editor of CleanRooms on the eve of the magazine`s tenth anniversary, I`d like to thank all our readers who have taken time to call, e-mail and write letters to the editorial staff. Your input has helped us steer the magazine to better meet your needs as a contamination control professional. You are looking for ideas on managing a cleanroom, evaluating and validating your cleanroom, increasing yields, reducing defects and relating to managers who do not always understand the needs of its contamination control departments.
CleanRooms` goal has always been to report on the news, research, technology and trends that can help contamination control engineers, their managers and line workers do their jobs better. This year, we`re expanding our coverage to include more technology, more products, more trends, more job-related “how-to” columns and more news.
In this issue, you`ll find a new column called “Ask the Experts.” Each month, one industry expert will answer your questions about cleanroom building, construction, management, supplies, and many other topics.
CleanRooms Associate Editor Susan English will be compiling your questions and comments and getting contamination control industry experts to provide the answers. (In this issue, see page 30). Give Susan a call or send her an e-mail, fax or letter with your questions.
On page 14, you will notice another new feature. Several times a year, we will be bringing you a case study from one of the many industries CleanRooms covers. Each case study will demonstrate how our readers solved challenging contamination control problems by applying new technology, methods or processes. This month, engineers from the Die Production Section of Motorola`s MOS 8 Microprocessor and Memory Technologies Group describe how they engineered an automatic staircase to allow operators access to horizontal furnaces without taking up precious cleanroom real estate.
Also, in the next few months we will be publishing a reader survey on this page, asking you what you`d like to see more of and less of in CleanRooms.
To celebrate CleanRooms tenth birthday, we will be devoting the September issue to a contamination control retrospective. Not only will we be looking back at the technology that changed the industry, but looking ahead at the technologies of the future. Don`t be surprised if one of our editors calls you for your input for this special issue.
As CleanRooms celebrates its tenth year as the magazine of contamination control news and technology, I hope you will continue to contribute your ideas, opinions, comments and letters.