A Photographic History of DaifukuDevelopment of the Cleanway Cleanroom Transport System
In the latter half of the 20th century, semiconductors revolutionized electronics and became an integral component in a wide variety of products, leading to a rapid increase in demand. For semiconductor manufacturing, achieving high performance and improving yield meant maintaining an incredibly high level of air cleanliness. The most effective way to maintain said levels was to minimize the involvement of workers, the primary source of dust, thus giving way to the need for automatic operations.
To meet these demands, Daifuku developed the Cleanway in 1984 as an automatic transport system for semiconductor wafers. This system incorporated Daifuku’s Telelift technology, which had become a mainstay of transport systems, helping to ensure low-vibration, high-speed transport. When designing the system, specific attention was paid to minimizing the generation of dust from the transport carts, as unlike current designs, it was common at the time for transport containers to have open wafer cassettes.
The Cleanway system has become a leading product in cleanrooms and is used by semiconductor manufacturers around the world. Daifuku remains dedicated to continually improving the Cleanway system by incorporating customer feedback while also striving to meet automation needs in back-end processes. As semiconductors have become a fundamental technology in today’s digital society, Daifuku is committed to furthering quality, stability, and reliability in this vital sector.
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- *This article is based on the content of “Hini Arata Nari: 50 Years of Daifuku History,” “Daifuku Group 70th Anniversary Magazine: Material Handling and Beyond,” and other documents.