Kokomo, Indiana – General Motors and Ventec Life Systems has delivered their 30,000th V+Pro critical care ventilator to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, GM and Ventec collaborated to rapidly scale up production of critical care ventilators. In one month, the teams went from an introductory phone call to delivering life-saving technology to frontline medical heroes. The full federal order was completed in just 154 days, with one ventilator completed about every seven minutes.

With the contract satisfied, GM has turned over operational control of the company’s Kokomo ventilator manufacturing operation to Ventec. Ventec will produce VOCSN multi-function critical care ventilators in Kokomo, as well as in Bothell, Washington, in response to ongoing demand during the pandemic. Ventec’s monthly ventilator production increased 80x during the pandemic.

“Our drive to put critical care ventilators into production was fueled by thousands of people at GM, Ventec, and our suppliers who all wanted to do their part to help save lives during the pandemic,” said GM Chairman and CEO Mary Barra. “It was inspiring to see so many people achieve so much so quickly.”

“Our hope continues to be that mitigation efforts stop the spread of this virus. Ventec Life Systems is committed to maintaining increased production capacity for as long as it is needed to ensure frontline healthcare workers have the tools necessary to save lives,” said Ventec Life Systems CEO Chris Kiple.

Chicago patient Jeffrey Dickerson says the ventilator was vital to his COVID-10 treatment.

“When I was rushed into the hospital room, I couldn’t walk without pausing to catch my breath. The team at Weiss [Memorial Hospital] put me on one of your machines, and I was fortunate to make a fast recovery. They later told me they were running out of ventilators, but fortunately had received one of the first shipments from the federal government, so I didn’t have to wait for help.”

Many of the men and women who joined this historic effort to quickly ramp up ventilator production felt a strong call of duty to support their families, communities and country.

“When I received information that Kokomo was hiring for its ventilator operations, I was homeschooling my niece. At first, I didn’t respond to the email. But it became apparent this was a historic moment and I wanted to do my part to help,” said assembler Glenn Sandifer.

Robotic technician Ian Cartier added, “It’s much deeper than simply hitting our goal. All of us chose to leave the security of our homes and give 110% every single day to build ventilators. We came in with the attitude that for every challenge we were handed that day, that we would face it, fix it, and overcome it. That collective attitude has brought us to where we are today.”

Shift leader Mike Schroeder said the experience was personal for him. “My daughter is a physician assistant and my wife works for a blood center. But it wasn’t until GM started this project in late March that it hit home for me. The moment I saw our first shipment of critical care ventilators being received at the hospitals by the doctors and medical staff was the moment I realized the importance of what we were doing.”

The unique collaboration between Ventec and GM to build V+Pro critical care ventilators began with conference calls initiated by stopthespread.org on March 17 and 18. The first units were delivered to Franciscan Health Olympia Fields in Olympia Fields, Illinois, and Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago. A third shipment was delivered by UPS to the Gary/Chicago International Airport on April 18 for distribution to other locations where the need was greatest.

Festo and Fraunhofer IPA were awarded one of the three top category honors in Munich during the Give a Breath Challenge award ceremony. The two companies developed the Virus Fighters Handbook, an information delivery app for field hospitals, where newly designed emergency ventilators and other new emergency devices are being set up, operated, and maintained for the first time by ad hoc personnel. The app places vital information at the fingertips of care providers about the new machines and how they are applied in COVID-19 treatment. The Give a Breath Challenge offered a total prize package exceeding $1 million.

The Give a Breath Challenge had three categories – designs for non-invasive lung ventilators and oxygen concentrators, development of non-invasive respirator masks, and delivery of information on the use of the new equipment plus basic knowledge on COVID-19 care.

With these three components, a complete respirator system can be set up. Category requirements included the ability to produce the equipment anywhere in the world using 3D printing or other fast manufacturing processes. The primary aim was to create the technological basis for the rapid local supply of ventilators to cope with imminent shortages in the emergency treatment of COVID-19 patients, mitigating the impact of the pandemic for people affected worldwide, and helping to alleviate staffing issues through the use of ad hoc personnel. Over 150 project designs from all over the world were submitted to the Challenge.

The Virus Fighters Handbook is based on the Festo Smartenance app, normally used for the maintenance and servicing of machines and systems in industrial production. Smartenance provided an existing and stable platform that only needed minimal reprogramming. The Fraunhofer team, which specializes in the development of educational material in the field of medical technology, supplied the training content.

When accessing the handbook, personnel receive information via the app on the set up, use, and maintenance of the newly developed equipment, with specific information provided on treating COVID-19 patients. The Virus Fighters Handbook will be made available free of charge to users worldwide of new emergency ventilators and other equipment, both as an app for downloading and as a web application.

Confluent Medical Technologies, a global leader in contract manufacturing of specialized medical devices, has opened its new Complex Catheter Design and Development Center in Austin, Texas. The state-of-the-art, rapid-prototyping, development and pilot facility greatly expands Confluent’s ability to provide customers with electrophysiology and neurovascular catheters, as well as complex delivery systems for structural heart and vascular applications.

The Austin Catheter Development Center will support customers from initial design to rapid-prototyping, regulatory support and through initial pilot builds for clinical trials. For high-volume production, the Austin facility works closely with Confluent’s manufacturing center in Costa Rica.

“We’re extremely excited about our new Austin Catheter Development Center,” says Confluent CEO and President Dean Schauer. “It greatly expands our capability to develop new, ready-for-production catheter designs and solidifies our position as the industry leader in providing fully integrated solutions to medical device customers.”

Leveraging 20-plus years of catheter development and manufacturing experience, Confluent offers a wide range of in-house catheter designs, from catheter components and balloon catheters to articulating devices and complex delivery systems. Processes include complex braided or coil-reinforced shafts, laser welding, over molding, balloon blowing, RF tip forming, robotic adhesives, multi-lumen extrusions, and thermal bonding.

Confluent partners with customers to reach product design freeze while planning for production. The company’s advanced design and development system ensures products are ready for manufacturing. While production processes are piloted at the new Austin facility, duplicate equipment at Confluent’s manufacturing center in Costa Rica ensures a smooth transition to high-volume production.

June 2020 U.S. cutting tool consumption totaled $150.6 million, according to the U.S. Cutting Tool Institute (USCTI) and AMT – The Association For Manufacturing Technology. This total, as reported by companies participating in the Cutting Tool Market Report collaboration, was up 10.1% from May's $136.8 million and down 24.6% when compared with the $199.7 million reported for June 2019. With a year-to-date total of $1 billion, 2020 is down 19.7% when compared with June 2019.

These numbers and all data in this report are based on the totals reported by the companies participating in the CTMR program. The totals here represent the majority of the U.S. market for cutting tools.

According to Bret Tayne, president of USCTI, “Consistent with recent reports on other industrial activity, the cutting tool industry rebounded somewhat in June. We still have a long way to go to return to activity levels that preceded the pandemic shutdown, but we appear to be headed in the right direction.”

Costikyan Jarvis, president of Jarvis Cutting Tools, adds:

The June figures of the Cutting Tool Market Report provide some hope that the worst of the contraction is behind us. With all the challenges that we faced, having a June number that is both a 10% improvement over May and a 5% improvement over April is a good sign. We should also take comfort that some of the initial July indicators show continued growth. The reduction, and the latest estimate of the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow is a 20.5% growth.

In this recession, both automotive and commercial aerospace industries, the two largest users of cutting tools, stopped producing for many weeks. In previous recessions, production has never gone down to zero; the implications of this are not yet understood. These industries have supply chains that are international and complex, and it is unclear if their supply chains have fully recovered. In addition to a drop in demand, customers are also talking about seeing significant de-inventorying in the supply chain. It will take several more months for everyone to understand both the shape of the recovery and how these industries adjust to the post-COVID world.