"Medical equipment can indeed be hard to manufacture in a hurry, particularly by firms that have never made it before."
An April 19 report from The Economist chronicles a globe-spanning effort by all kinds of companies to switch within hours to manufacturing and distributing supplies that are desperately needed by medical facilities during the pandemic. The obstacles such companies are overcoming at breakneck speed is an inspiring example of what people can do when they put their minds to it. Here are some passages from the report:
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“If you’re not asking what more you can do,” [Flavio] Volpe says, “we’re all going to fall short.”
For Mr Volpe, that means responding to the surge in demand for essential medical supplies caused by the pandemic. He is president of APMA, the trade association for Canada’s auto-parts suppliers. So far 77 member firms are converting some capacity to making medical equipment. A consortium led by one of the biggest, Linamar, is helping to assemble ventilators. Woodbridge, an upholsterer, is turning out masks. Plastics firms are producing face shields; airbag-makers, gowns; others, nose-swabs.
For Mr Volpe, that means responding to the surge in demand for essential medical supplies caused by the pandemic. He is president of APMA, the trade association for Canada’s auto-parts suppliers. So far 77 member firms are converting some capacity to making medical equipment. A consortium led by one of the biggest, Linamar, is helping to assemble ventilators. Woodbridge, an upholsterer, is turning out masks. Plastics firms are producing face shields; airbag-makers, gowns; others, nose-swabs.
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Typically in markets, surges in demand call forth extra supply. But the supply of medical gear has not been able to expand at the breakneck pace needed to keep up with the virus.
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Worse, the world economy’s sudden halt has caused bottlenecks. Flexport, a freight forwarder, says that normally half of all air freight cargo (on some routes, up to 80%) travels in the holds of passenger planes that are no longer flying; shipping lines, meanwhile, have cancelled sailings or dropped ports from their itineraries. Vendors’ commercial terms have become tighter too.
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Amid the scramble, lots of higher-minded efforts like Mr Volpe’s are underway to fill the gap. Some are of cottage-industry dimensions: across Britain, for instance, “scrub hubs” have sprouted, with volunteers making basic gowns at home for doctors, nurses and care workers. But to make more sophisticated gear at scale, you need industrial muscle.
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Fashion firms are turning their supply chains to masks and gowns. Sweden’s H&M has sent 50,000 masks each to Italy and Spain, and is planning to deliver 1m protective, single-use aprons to Swedish hospitals in the coming weeks, all from suppliers in China.
Canada Goose, which makes outdoor apparel, has committed itself to making 60,000 disposable gowns for isolation patients per week from its domestic factories.
In France, the LVMH factory that normally makes Christian Dior perfumes has been retooled to produce hand-sanitiser.
Makers of cars and planes are starting to turn out ventilators and other equipment—sometimes from scratch, sometimes lending their scale to the existing products of specialist companies.
Makers of cars and planes are starting to turn out ventilators and other equipment—sometimes from scratch, sometimes lending their scale to the existing products of specialist companies.
On April 14th General Motors began producing critical-care ventilators from Ventec Life Systems, a medical-technology firm, at its car factory in Indiana. Ford, PSA, Valeo and others have also switched from vehicles to ventilators. Israel Aerospace Industries, a defence company, has converted a missile production line to the same.
“With time, we can make anything,” says Mr Volpe at APMA. “Whether you’re making a plastic part that goes into a ventilator or a plastic part that goes into a Jaguar, it’s the same process.”
“With time, we can make anything,” says Mr Volpe at APMA. “Whether you’re making a plastic part that goes into a ventilator or a plastic part that goes into a Jaguar, it’s the same process.”
The difference lies in speed. Changing an engineering process, from winning a contract to retooling to production, might normally take six months. That is being compressed into a few days. Canada’s health authorities have helped by speeding up approvals, he says, without dropping their standards. There have been some failures.
Medical equipment can indeed be hard to manufacture in a hurry, particularly by firms that have never made it before. In Britain, NHS staff report that some new shipments of droplet-resistant gowns—of which there is a severe shortage, because they weren’t included in the existing pandemic stockpile, designed for airborne flu viruses—have failed quality tests when they arrived, rendering them unusable. After some Chinese-made equipment sent to Europe was rejected as substandard, China is now requiring that its exporters meet importing countries’ standards before their goods leave the factory (though that causes more holdups meanwhile).
Sourcing high-specification materials also can be difficult, although Barbour has had success switching from its famous wax jackets and Ford is adapting fabric meant for airbags.
Medical equipment can indeed be hard to manufacture in a hurry, particularly by firms that have never made it before. In Britain, NHS staff report that some new shipments of droplet-resistant gowns—of which there is a severe shortage, because they weren’t included in the existing pandemic stockpile, designed for airborne flu viruses—have failed quality tests when they arrived, rendering them unusable. After some Chinese-made equipment sent to Europe was rejected as substandard, China is now requiring that its exporters meet importing countries’ standards before their goods leave the factory (though that causes more holdups meanwhile).
Sourcing high-specification materials also can be difficult, although Barbour has had success switching from its famous wax jackets and Ford is adapting fabric meant for airbags.
Mr Volpe says his biggest bottleneck is materials: some unwoven material for specialised masks is made in volume only in China; the supply of resins used in swabs are threatened by American export restraints.
These problems become even more acute with complicated medical machinery. Britain’s government has overseen a scheme under which aerospace, automobile and engineering companies agreed to make ventilators. However, only one design—adapted from an existing ventilator, from Penlon, a medical-device company—has so far been approved for medical use. Changes to the required specification led the government to cancel an order for thousands of units of a more simple ventilating device, known as “BlueSky”, from a consortium including the Renault and Red Bull Formula 1 groups.
And clearing one bottleneck may reveal another. Although ventilators, for example, are crucial for treating many covid-19 patients in intensive care, they are not used in isolation. Every ventilator bed requires high-pressure oxygen (which many hospitals cannot provide at scale) as well as other machines to monitor the heart and kidneys. All this takes up more precious space and requires trained staff, of whom many are sick or in precautionary isolation.
Even if sufficient stock is available, distributing it is a challenge. General practitioners, ambulances, mental-health services and care homes all need PPE [personal protective equipment] as well as hospitals. In England, NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts and other parts of the service, estimates that the supply chain has gone from delivering to around 250 trusts to tens of thousands of separate organisations.
These problems become even more acute with complicated medical machinery. Britain’s government has overseen a scheme under which aerospace, automobile and engineering companies agreed to make ventilators. However, only one design—adapted from an existing ventilator, from Penlon, a medical-device company—has so far been approved for medical use. Changes to the required specification led the government to cancel an order for thousands of units of a more simple ventilating device, known as “BlueSky”, from a consortium including the Renault and Red Bull Formula 1 groups.
And clearing one bottleneck may reveal another. Although ventilators, for example, are crucial for treating many covid-19 patients in intensive care, they are not used in isolation. Every ventilator bed requires high-pressure oxygen (which many hospitals cannot provide at scale) as well as other machines to monitor the heart and kidneys. All this takes up more precious space and requires trained staff, of whom many are sick or in precautionary isolation.
Even if sufficient stock is available, distributing it is a challenge. General practitioners, ambulances, mental-health services and care homes all need PPE [personal protective equipment] as well as hospitals. In England, NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts and other parts of the service, estimates that the supply chain has gone from delivering to around 250 trusts to tens of thousands of separate organisations.
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