On March 19, four GM engineers boarded a late flight from Detroit to Seattle. By daybreak, they were huddled in a conference room at Ventec, a small maker of ventilators whose entire operation is smaller than a GM car dealership. Ventec execs had turned over blueprints for the roughly 700 parts that go into its ventilator to the GM engineers, hoping to get their help scaling up production. The GM contingent, which usually specializes in designing and sourcing parts for building vehicles, used their smartphones to take videos of the toaster-sized machines being built by hand. A box of parts was overnighted to Michigan.
A shortage of the machines for patients with the coronovirus has sent the government and private sectors scrambling, reports The Wall Street Journal (March 30, 2020). Manufacturers from GM, Ford and Tesla to medical-device giants like Medtronic, and even British vacuum-maker Dyson, are gearing up to boost production. GM said it would start producing ventilators at its Kokomo facility and ramp up to 10,000 machines a month. (The auto industry had also been drafted to help during World War II).
There is little overlap between making cars—a highly automated process involving fast-moving assembly lines and robotic welding machines, which plays out in vast factories—and the labor-intensive job of building ventilators, which are largely hand-built at small workstations.
But car companies are being called on to help because they typically work with thousands of parts suppliers—many making components similar to those needed for a ventilator—and are accustomed to manufacturing at a large scale. At the same time, car makers have been in crisis mode themselves from the new coronavirus. GM has shut most of its N. American factories to keep the virus from spreading among workers. Still 100’s of workers volunteered for the job to help the nation.
Classroom discussion questions:
- How do the manufacturing processes differ between a GM and a Ventec?
- What strengths does GM bring to the table for this project?