conferences in The Hague, Lübeck, Stuttgart,
Munich, Fulda, Basel and Bielefeld. Together
with Eckhard Schollmeyer, Professor for Phy-
sical Chemistry at the Duisburg-Essen-Univer-
sity, he collaborated on a lecture during the
Techtextile Conference in Dusseldorf in 1995.
Also, he heldmany lectures during industry
training events of the large users of precision
cleaningwipers. Together with Yuko, his wife,
Labuda organised the German-speaking LRTS
conference (Lübeck Clean Technology Sympo-
sium) (13) in 2000 and 2002. The couple invi-
ted themost respected experts inGermany to
this event and financed the entire conference
with their private funds.
Approximately at the turn of themillenni-
um, Win Labuda had the idea of building a
fully automated production line for precision
cleaningwipersmade of polyester knitware.
He visualised a facility inwhich all process
steps for the production of thesewipers would
be completely automated. A roll of polyester
material would simply be fed into the start of
the production line and at its end, accurately
stacked nonwovenwipers – decontaminated
several times and formatted by a laser–would
exit. The construction of this facility however,
proved to be difficult.
From the conception of the idea until the
first start-up, the concept of the automated
washing and rinsing operationwas repeatedly
altered by Labuda‘s staff, so that the costs for
planning and construction increased signifi-
cantly. Nevertheless, in 2007 Labuda could
proudly present theworking process (14)
to an American competitor (Milliken). Sub-
sequently Labuda received the invitation to
temporarilywork as a consultant in the United
States for process-technology.
After reaching age 65 in 2003, he had trans-
ferred the general management of Clear &
Clean -Werk für Reintechnik GmbH to his wife
Yuko, who is still responsible for the operatio-
nal part of the company until this day (2016).
For the Labudas, the year 2005was charac-
terised by a newwind blowing. The Infineon
Group, which had been the largest customer
of Clear & Clean products thus far, had hired a
new Vice-President of Purchasing. He disem-
powered the engineers responsible for the
product selection of cleanroom consumables.
The Contamination-control enginieers, who
had until then spoken in favour of Labuda‘s
technology at Infineon, turned out to be not
strong enough to counter the new purchasing
concept with one of their own. Win Labuda
had always advocated product assessment
based on process costs; now it was solely
the purchasing pricewhich dictated the
decision-making. The cleaning-efficiency of
the various products was not even conside-
red. The Labudas suspected that a “Lopez”
phenomenonwas about to be repeated; it
had previously caused existential problems for
many small suppliers of the Volkswagen cor-
poration. The Labudas chose not to compete
under these circumstances and suggested to
end business relations with Infineon.
This episodewas one of the great disappoint-
ments of Labuda’s life. After having spent
half of his life researching and specifying the
technical quality and usability parameters of
BIOGRAPHY
ReinRaumTechnik
3/2008
//
5
Fig. 13
The second LRTS conference - Lübeck Clean
Technology Symposium 2002
Fig. 14
Formatting and stacking stationwith auto-
matedwiper stacking and laser formatting
