Cleveland, Ohio – As President Donald Trump used the Defense Production Act Friday to order General Motors (GM) to produce ventilators, a move the automaker announced it was making a few hours earlier.

"Our negotiations with GM regarding its ability to supply ventilators have been productive, but our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course," Trump said. "GM was wasting time. Today’s action will help ensure the quick production of ventilators that will save American lives."

In response, GM officials reiterated that the automaker has been working non-stop for the past two weeks to boost production of Ventilators from Washington-based Ventec Life Systems. GM had been supporting Ventec's existing plants but announced plans Friday to begin building ventilators in Indiana by the end of next month and surgical masks in Michigan this week.

“We are proud to stand with other American companies and our skilled employees to meet the needs of this global pandemic,” said Mary Barra, GM chairman and CEO. GM announced plans on March 23, to support Washington-based Ventilator producer Ventec Life Systems, giving the medical products company access to its logistics and purchasing networks and sending engineers to its plants to identify production bottlenecks.

On Friday, the automaker said it will build Ventec’s VOCSN ventilators in Kokomo, Indiana, at a components plant that typically makes automotive electronics. The companies are targeting 10,000 machines per month by the end of April with the ability to scale up for more if needed.

The announcement came as Trump criticized GM on Twitter, claiming that GM promised more machines earlier and that it wants too much money for them.

“As usual with “this” General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, “very quickly”. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar. Always a mess with Mary B.”

GM officials have been in constant contact with lawmakers and the administration, but until Friday, the company had not publicly committed to large-scale ventilator production beyond supporting Ventec. Officials at the automaker say they’re contributing labor and materials for the ventilators at its own cost.

“GM is in the position to help build more ventilators because of the remarkable performance of GM and Ventec’s global supply base,” Barra said. “Our joint teams have moved mountains to find real solutions to save lives and fight the pandemic.”

Trump also said GM should reopen the Lordstown, Ohio, plant it closed last year as Chevy Cruze sales fell and make ventilators there. He also urged Ford to get involved. GM sold the Lordstown plant last year to Lordstown Motors, a startup company that plans to make electric pickups. The president praised the sale at the time.

Ford has discussed making ventilators, but so far, the company has been supporting GE Healthcare, identifying automotive parts that can be repurposed for medical manufacturing, not building its own machines. GE Healthcare officials said last week that Ford’s help could boost production 10x.

Further confusing matters were Trump’s comments from earlier in the week that questioned whether or not large-scale manufacturing of new ventilators was even necessary, saying he didn’t think hospitals would need as many units as they were requesting.

GM officials said retooling is already taking place in Indiana, and plans to bring 1,000 workers to the plant for the construction work. Most of GM’s plants are shut down to slow the spread of COVID-19, so there are plenty of available employees.

In addition to the ventilators, GM has also begun making Level-1 surgical masks at its Warren, Michigan, plant. Within two weeks, the company hopes to produce 50,000 masks per day, ramping up to 100,000 per day if needed.

Medical masks range from units used for surgeries and procedures with little chance of fluid transfer or spray to the highly sought-after N95 respirators that block viruses such as the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The GM-built Level-1 masks are on the low end of that scale, but hospitals have requested increased availability of all masks because of the rapid spread of the virus.

GM employees in Warren were installing equipment Friday for clean-room production of masks. Mask production is set to start this week. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has already begun face mask production, and Ford workers are assembling clear face shields for first responders and healthcare workers.

Toyota, on Friday, said it has also begun 3D printing face shields and is looking for partners to help it begin face mask and ventilator work.

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of Today's Motor Vehicles and Today's eMobility and a contributor to Today's Medical Developments and Aerospace Manufacturing and Design. He has written about the automotive industry for more than 20 years at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

rschoenberger@gie.net 

A coalition of companies and universities assembled by Stratasys Ltd. to produce face shields leveraging 3D printers now numbers more than 150. Among others, the list includes Boeing, General Atomics, Medtronic, Dunwoody College of Technology, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Minnesota.

In an effort to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, Stratasys set an initial goal to produce 5,000 face shields at no cost to recipients through its own and partner resources by March 27, 2020. This includes both a 3D-printed visor and a clear plastic shield that covers the entire face. That number will be exceeded by the end of the day on March 27, and the coalition should be able to produce more than 11,000 face shields the week of March 29, and 16,000 or more during the following week.

Any 3D printing shop that wishes to help print at least 100 visors can fill out an online form to be invited to join the effort. For the U.S., Stratasys is using its GrabCAD Shop work order management software to assign orders from healthcare systems to each coalition member. In Europe, the company is serving as a hub to connect service bureaus with those requesting help and has fielded offers and requests in most of the larger countries. The company also has posted the full face shield printing and assembly instructions for anyone to produce face shields on their own.

So far, the coalition is serving the needs of more than 30 different health systems, covering hospitals, clinics, academic medical centers, and nursing homes. Stratasys has received requests for 350,000 face shields, so further acceleration in production across coalition members is critical.

Stratasys is producing thousands of visors itself in Minnesota, California, and Texas, marshalling the resources of Stratasys, Stratasys Direct Manufacturing, and MakerBot. This is in addition to continuing to meet other requests of customers and partners for 3D printers, materials, on-demand parts, and service. “Stay in place” orders are not currently limiting its ability to meet these needs other than limited access to on-site support.

The company is also responding to the crisis in additional ways, including ramping up production of 3D printing materials to support its partner network. It also has made free the material licenses on many of its high-end printers used to make the visors during this time.

An initiative led by anesthesiology residents of Massachusetts General Hospital called the CoVent-19 Challenge will launch next week. The challenge will ask engineers and designers to help develop a new rapidly deployable ventilator and other innovative solutions to the ventilator shortage, and Stratasys will support the challenge and promote it via its GrabCAD community of more than 7 million professional designers, engineers, manufacturers and students. The company will also provide prototyping services to the challenge finalists.

I received this article a few weeks before COVID-19 became a global pandemic. Looking through my emails it caught my attention and I knew it would be a good time to offer up these insights on how in slower times it is wise to look toward your digital transformation.

We are still open for business and here to report on the developments in medical device and equipment manufacturing. So, how you are faring during the pandemic? Drop me a line and let me know what new projects you have going, how the stay at home order crossing the world is impacting/not impacting your business, or what are your general thoughts on manufacturing today. Stay healthy,  stay socially distant!

How to take advantage of the downturn for the upturn

Anticyclical behavior is a subject already discussed in economics classes at high school. The students are taught that saving in good times is useful to be prepared for bad times. Spending in bad times on the other hand helps to boost the economy. A similar approach can be applied for manufacturing companies.

"If you invest in the infrastructure of your production during a lull, then you are ready to start before the next economic recovery," says Jürgen Petzel, vice president sales at MPDV. "A manufacturing execution system (MES) like HYDRA helps detecting waste in production and reveals unexpected efficiency potentials." 

Wisely using free resources
In times of low order volumes, the existing resources – be it machines or human resources – cannot always be utilized to capacity. A sensible solution therefore is to use any vacant times for other purposes. You could introduce an MES or extend the system in use.

"Take advantage of the opportunity and connect idle machines to the MES more quickly. Also test new functions in parallel with production. Such times are also perfect to train your production staff and to bridge longer unproductive periods," Petzel explains. "At the same time, you might be able to secure jobs."

When preparing the implementation or extension of an MES, the organizational processes can be optimized and streamlined, if required. Experienced MPDV consultants analyze current processes and suggest optimizations before digitizing unnecessary complex structures. If the usual time pressure is removed, you can tackle the MES implementation with all eyes set on the job.

Petzel reports: "Especially when production is not running at full capacity, we can use the time to standardize the MES project as far as possible – just like in a greenfield project. The advantage is obvious: If we can integrate most of your requirements in the standard, the costs are much lower, both the initial investment and the costs over time."

Another benefit is that the operation and maintenance of IT systems close to the standard are undemanding as no custom-built features must be observed.

Before you invest, get informed
If things get tight due to the economic situation, you can use a downturn period to inform yourself about the possibilities of an MES. This takes time – and time is what you have. To this end, MPDV offers a wide range of information events. The workshop MES and Industry 4.0 provides for interested specialists and executives an overview of the scope and possible benefit of an MES and the first steps needed to reach the Smart Factory. As part of the workshop, a HYDRA user reports about their experiences with the system.

In the course of the Workshop Best Practice MES, a manufacturing company outlines how they use HYDRA in live operation and explains on site the functions and advantages of an MES. If business trips are not on the agenda, the webinar series is perfect to inform yourself about MES. In four webinars over the year, MPDV informs about application areas, functions and benefits of HYDRA and introduces interested participants to the world of Industry 4.0.

Petzel adds: "For most of our users, everything started with a visit to one of our information events. The high number of participants proves that the demand for information is still high. By attending these events, you are in pole position in the race for competitiveness in times of digitization and Industry 4.0. So don't hesitate and meet the challenges now.”

UPDATE March 31, 2020, 9 a.m.: Ford has indefinitely delayed reopening its plants. The only facility with an opening date is the Rawsonville Components Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, which will reopen April 20 to build ventilators to treat COVID-19 patients.

Cleveland, Ohio – Automaker responses to the growing COVID-19 pandemic mirror the national response – as understanding of the threat grows, so does the severity of countermeasures. In late February and early March, the response was limited to individual shift cancellations for extra cleaning, encouraging office staff to work from home, and limiting travel. Plant and office shutdowns targeted at days or a week followed.

Several major automakers announced plans Thursday to extend shutdowns that were due to end at the end of the month through early or mid-April. The list of closure extensions include:

• Ford had targeted a March 30 restart but earlier this week extended shutdowns indefinitely. On Thursday, the automaker gave an April 6 restart date for its Hermosillo, Mexico, plant and an April 14 target for plants in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Missouri. That restart would allow the company to resume building F-Series pickups, several SUVs, and commercial vans. Support plants that build transmissions or stamp body panels would also restart by mid-April.
• Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) plans an April 14 restart in the U.S. and Canada. The company has not yet announced plans for its facilities in Mexico. The United Auto Workers (UAW) announced earlier this week that two FCA employees (one in Indiana, one in Michigan) dies from COVID-19, and the union had pushed for longer shutdowns to ensure worker safety.
• Honda On Wednesday, Honda officials said the company was shutting down several powersports plants and said they were considering longer shutdowns to North American auto plants. On Thursday, the company announced plans to restart production on April 7, a week longer than it had originally planned. Honda officials said their plants are safe, but with customers in most of the country unable to leave their homes to shop for cars, there’s less need for more new cars on dealers’ lots.
• Toyota initially planned a two-day shutdown, March 23 to March 24, to clean plants, but that plan, announced a little more than a week ago, quickly morphed into a two-week shutdown. On Thursday, the automaker said North American sites would remain closed through April 20, staying closed for nearly a month instead of the initial 48 hours.
• Volkswagen has extended its one-week shutdown in Chattanooga, Tennessee, into a two-week closure. The plant is now scheduled to reopen on April 5 instead of at the end of March.

About the author: Robert Schoenberger is the editor of Today's Motor Vehicles and Today's eMobility and a contributor to Today's Medical Developments and Aerospace Manufacturing and Design. He has written about the automotive industry for more than 20 years at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio; The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky; and The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi.

rschoenberger@gie.net