How to run a 'clean' command on a module before re-compiling?

I have had it multiple times now that IntelliJ was not able to handle the compiling of my groovy/java projects.
The compiler often complains about missing or non existing classes when running a 'compile' or 'make' on single classes or modules.

However, after invalidating the caches via 'File' -> 'Invalidate Caches' and restarting the IDE the system is able to compile the module without problems.  Sometimes it also works to modify all the classes that were 'missing' to force a re-compile of the all the dependencies in question.

The issue is that deleting and rebuilding the whole cache takes tiiiiiiiimeeeee... so much of it that it is getting pretty annoying

I assume that the problem lies somewhere in how the automatic re-compiling and caching is handled for the groovy/java modules and that for some reason there is stale data in the cache.

Is there any way to only clear the compiler cache of a single module?! Or any other suggestions?

Thanks for the help.