一根松紧带曾是这场全球疫情中最让玛西·费舍尔头疼也最亟待解决的问题。
3月20日,一项紧急任务摆在了玛西·费舍尔等200来位福特高管、员工的面前:作为美国最大的汽车制造商,如何调整因受疫情威胁而停工的庞大产线,转而生产急需的医疗用品。在接到这项任务之前,作为福特的一名老员工,玛西的工作是负责监督福特全球车身及内饰的设计工作。
福特的同城劲敌通用汽车已先行一步,与呼吸机制造企业Ventec Life Systems敲定了合作关系。福特首席执行官吉姆·哈克特及其副手与医疗供应商梅奥医疗的专家及白宫进行了磋商,后者公开呼吁福特投入到医疗物资的生产中来。很快他们便与通用电气和3M等企业达成了战略合作。
由于更复杂的医疗设备要耗费数周乃至数月的时间才能真正投产,所以玛西的团队决定先将最基础的医疗用品——塑料防护面罩作为切入点。防护面罩可以保护医务人员免受来自患者飞沫和其它空气传播病毒的威胁。她的团队在一天之内便拿出了可行的设计方案,并随即与供应商讨论原料供应事宜,以便批量生产防护面罩。防护面罩的塑料配件非常简单。但在用于确保面罩紧贴使用者面部的松紧带方面,玛西回忆道:“福特遇到了严重的产能不足问题。”
最后他们还是想到了解决方案,虽然看起来平平无奇,但非常值得骄傲。3月26日凌晨4点,福特的一家供应商开始在自家工厂生产挠性橡胶条,或者叫防风雨密封条,这种橡胶条通常用于密封汽车门窗。玛西表示:“我们早上8点就做出了原型产品”。几个小时之内,样品便已送到当地医院供急诊医生检查测试。福特在随后的几天时间里迅速生产出了10万只防护面罩,截至4月中旬,其产能已达到每周100万只。那种橡胶替代品好用么?参与测试该款防护面罩的底特律医院急诊医生艾琳·布伦南表示:“这是一次大胆且完全可行的创新。玛西的团队太棒了。”
但在转型成为医疗用品制造商的福特面前,这还只能算是“开胃小菜”。福特的其它任务,包括7月4日前生产出5万台呼吸机的承诺,无疑更为复杂,也会面临更为严苛的审视目光。
福特的“阿波罗计划”以千头万绪的“阿波罗13号”宇航员救援行动命名,合作企业来自各行各业,包括通用电气、3M及诸多规模较小的供应商,此外,超过750名美国联合汽车工人工会的成员也主动请缨,参与运营改造后的福特工厂。除防护面罩及呼吸机外,福特还将生产包括口罩、防护服、呼吸面罩在内的多种医疗用品。这些医疗用品的设计、配件采购及生产大多并非易事,在形势危急的大流行期间更是如此。
吉姆·鲍姆比克是福特负责企业产品线管理的副总裁,目前他正负责福特医疗用品的生产工作,鲍姆比克表示:“生命危在旦夕。这些机器很多都非常复杂,提高产能需要时间,而我们现在最缺的就是时间。”
对于制造维持危重病人呼吸,构造复杂又急需的呼吸机而言尤其如此。通常来说,只有少数几家专门生产医疗用品的厂家才会生产呼吸机,制造所需的配件更多,监管要求也远高于防护面罩。
为了简化流程,福特与通用电气将目光投向了弗罗里达小企业Airon生产的一款呼吸机上,该款呼吸机已获FDA批准,且构造相对简单。通用电气医疗集团首席质量官汤姆·韦斯特里克在一封邮件声明中表示:“关键在于速度,要尽快将尽可能多的呼吸机交到救治新冠肺炎患者的医务人员手中。”
这是一次大胆且完全可行的创新。
即便只是生产呼吸机,在福特位于密歇根州伊普西兰蒂的罗森维尔工厂开始生产前,采购、设计及与监管部门沟通便要花费大约一个月的时间。每台Airon呼吸机有多达350个配件,在开始寻找大规模生产方法之前,亚德里安·普莱斯的生产团队花费了整整一个周末的时间对这些配件进行拆解和3D扫描。(替代配件:由常用于福特汽车动力总成中的定时阀改造而成。)
普莱斯是福特全球制造核心工程部门的负责人, 4月初开始负责呼吸机的生产工作,他表示:“在制造汽车或卡车时,作为生产团队,我们首先要想办法生产一台原型车,然后再生产几台样车,最后才是大批量生产。这就是未来几周制造呼吸机所要完成的流程。”
福特预计其内部呼吸机生产将于4月20日这一周启动,目标是到4月底生产出1500台,5月底1.2万台,100天内生产5万台呼吸机。(通用汽车将于5月底前供应6000台呼吸机,8月底前供应3万台呼吸机。)但这种速度仍然不够快,据专家估计,美国到4月中旬还需要1.4万台呼吸机。
马库斯·沙巴克是一名医生,同时也是专注于医疗器械及患者安全的非营利性机构ECRI的负责人,他表示:“我们行动太晚了”。他认为,无论未来数月我们能生产出多少台呼吸机,还有许多问题是任何制造商都解决不了的,比如能够使用这些机器的受过良好训练的医务人员同样严重不足。
芝加哥McGuireWoods的医疗律师朱莉·莱特瓦特补充说:“这些企业能站出来当然是非常好也非常积极的事情。但细节问题也很关键。他们人手够么?谁来买单?如何分配?”
面对感染风险,美国联合汽车工人工会的志愿者们将在保持社交疏离的情况下生产呼吸机。此外,福特还表示会考虑采取新的技术来保护工人,但尚未明确将采取何种新技术,显然也不能保证工人不被感染,后两个问题则更为棘手。鲍姆比克表示:“我们还没讨论过费用问题”,公司也正与医院、政府机构及来自FEMA、CDC和白宫的官员讨论其医疗用品的分配问题。
联邦政府也在越发积极地参与到这一工作中来。4月8日,美国卫生与公众服务部宣布与通用汽车签定了一项价值4.89亿美元的合同,由后者负责在8月底前交付30000台呼吸机。届时,福特或将能够供应大量的医疗用品与个人防护装备。4月13日,福特宣布已开始生产口罩,并将原本用于生产安全气囊的原料用于生产可重复使用的防护服。
随着防护面罩源源不断的从其工厂中出货,玛西也将工作重点转移到了更复杂的医疗设备之上,即一款使用电池供电的空气净化呼吸面罩。福特内部将其称为简版PAPR(电动空气净化呼吸器),PAPR是一种由兜帽、供气软管构成的防护装备,医生有时会在佩戴N95口罩的同时使用这种装备,或者在N95口罩严重短缺的情况下用其代替N95口罩。玛西表示:“我们当时觉得这种物资可能会出现缺口,别家可能生产不了,而福特在这方面恰好拥有很多优势。”
该款PAPR由福特在3M产品的基础上改造而来,并根据3M的建议开发,在4月14日投产前,福特也需要与监管机构进行沟通。福特表示,将在其临近密歇根州夫莱特洛克的弗利兰工厂组装至少10万套PAPR呼吸面罩。
玛西本月早些时候表示:“现在的情况充满了不确定性,病毒的传播速度实在太快了。”这也是疫情笼罩的春天里大家最常说的一句话。
向病毒开战
1940年代,为打赢二战,福特和通用汽车的工厂纷纷转产飞机、坦克。现在,它们与许多汽车行业的同行和其它行业的领导者一样,为抗击新冠疫情转而生产医疗物资。让我们来看看这些企业都在做些什么:
福特
福特每周生产的塑料防护面罩已达100万只,并承诺在7月前生产5万台Airon呼吸机。该公司还在生产3M设计的一款呼吸面罩,同时也在帮助3M和通用电气提升呼吸面罩与呼吸机的产量。
通用汽车
通用汽车向联邦政府承诺将与医疗器械生产厂家Ventec Life Systems携手在8月底前生产3万台呼吸机。除此之外,通用汽车还将生产医用外科口罩,并表示最终产能将达到日产5万只。
施乐
施乐正与Vortran Medical Technology合作生产非ICU用一次性呼吸机,月产能在6月前最高将达20万台。
戴森
戴森向英国政府承诺提供1万台新设计的呼吸机,公司创始人詹姆斯·戴森还表示其个人将再向国际社会额外捐赠5000台呼吸机。
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
一根松紧带曾是这场全球疫情中最让玛西·费舍尔头疼也最亟待解决的问题。
3月20日,一项紧急任务摆在了玛西·费舍尔等200来位福特高管、员工的面前:作为美国最大的汽车制造商,如何调整因受疫情威胁而停工的庞大产线,转而生产急需的医疗用品。在接到这项任务之前,作为福特的一名老员工,玛西的工作是负责监督福特全球车身及内饰的设计工作。
福特的同城劲敌通用汽车已先行一步,与呼吸机制造企业Ventec Life Systems敲定了合作关系。福特首席执行官吉姆·哈克特及其副手与医疗供应商梅奥医疗的专家及白宫进行了磋商,后者公开呼吁福特投入到医疗物资的生产中来。很快他们便与通用电气和3M等企业达成了战略合作。
由于更复杂的医疗设备要耗费数周乃至数月的时间才能真正投产,所以玛西的团队决定先将最基础的医疗用品——塑料防护面罩作为切入点。防护面罩可以保护医务人员免受来自患者飞沫和其它空气传播病毒的威胁。她的团队在一天之内便拿出了可行的设计方案,并随即与供应商讨论原料供应事宜,以便批量生产防护面罩。防护面罩的塑料配件非常简单。但在用于确保面罩紧贴使用者面部的松紧带方面,玛西回忆道:“福特遇到了严重的产能不足问题。”
最后他们还是想到了解决方案,虽然看起来平平无奇,但非常值得骄傲。3月26日凌晨4点,福特的一家供应商开始在自家工厂生产挠性橡胶条,或者叫防风雨密封条,这种橡胶条通常用于密封汽车门窗。玛西表示:“我们早上8点就做出了原型产品”。几个小时之内,样品便已送到当地医院供急诊医生检查测试。福特在随后的几天时间里迅速生产出了10万只防护面罩,截至4月中旬,其产能已达到每周100万只。那种橡胶替代品好用么?参与测试该款防护面罩的底特律医院急诊医生艾琳·布伦南表示:“这是一次大胆且完全可行的创新。玛西的团队太棒了。”
但在转型成为医疗用品制造商的福特面前,这还只能算是“开胃小菜”。福特的其它任务,包括7月4日前生产出5万台呼吸机的承诺,无疑更为复杂,也会面临更为严苛的审视目光。
福特的“阿波罗计划”以千头万绪的“阿波罗13号”宇航员救援行动命名,合作企业来自各行各业,包括通用电气、3M及诸多规模较小的供应商,此外,超过750名美国联合汽车工人工会的成员也主动请缨,参与运营改造后的福特工厂。除防护面罩及呼吸机外,福特还将生产包括口罩、防护服、呼吸面罩在内的多种医疗用品。这些医疗用品的设计、配件采购及生产大多并非易事,在形势危急的大流行期间更是如此。
吉姆·鲍姆比克是福特负责企业产品线管理的副总裁,目前他正负责福特医疗用品的生产工作,鲍姆比克表示:“生命危在旦夕。这些机器很多都非常复杂,提高产能需要时间,而我们现在最缺的就是时间。”
对于制造维持危重病人呼吸,构造复杂又急需的呼吸机而言尤其如此。通常来说,只有少数几家专门生产医疗用品的厂家才会生产呼吸机,制造所需的配件更多,监管要求也远高于防护面罩。
为了简化流程,福特与通用电气将目光投向了弗罗里达小企业Airon生产的一款呼吸机上,该款呼吸机已获FDA批准,且构造相对简单。通用电气医疗集团首席质量官汤姆·韦斯特里克在一封邮件声明中表示:“关键在于速度,要尽快将尽可能多的呼吸机交到救治新冠肺炎患者的医务人员手中。”
这是一次大胆且完全可行的创新。
即便只是生产呼吸机,在福特位于密歇根州伊普西兰蒂的罗森维尔工厂开始生产前,采购、设计及与监管部门沟通便要花费大约一个月的时间。每台Airon呼吸机有多达350个配件,在开始寻找大规模生产方法之前,亚德里安·普莱斯的生产团队花费了整整一个周末的时间对这些配件进行拆解和3D扫描。(替代配件:由常用于福特汽车动力总成中的定时阀改造而成。)
普莱斯是福特全球制造核心工程部门的负责人, 4月初开始负责呼吸机的生产工作,他表示:“在制造汽车或卡车时,作为生产团队,我们首先要想办法生产一台原型车,然后再生产几台样车,最后才是大批量生产。这就是未来几周制造呼吸机所要完成的流程。”
福特预计其内部呼吸机生产将于4月20日这一周启动,目标是到4月底生产出1500台,5月底1.2万台,100天内生产5万台呼吸机。(通用汽车将于5月底前供应6000台呼吸机,8月底前供应3万台呼吸机。)但这种速度仍然不够快,据专家估计,美国到4月中旬还需要1.4万台呼吸机。
马库斯·沙巴克是一名医生,同时也是专注于医疗器械及患者安全的非营利性机构ECRI的负责人,他表示:“我们行动太晚了”。他认为,无论未来数月我们能生产出多少台呼吸机,还有许多问题是任何制造商都解决不了的,比如能够使用这些机器的受过良好训练的医务人员同样严重不足。
芝加哥McGuireWoods的医疗律师朱莉·莱特瓦特补充说:“这些企业能站出来当然是非常好也非常积极的事情。但细节问题也很关键。他们人手够么?谁来买单?如何分配?”
面对感染风险,美国联合汽车工人工会的志愿者们将在保持社交疏离的情况下生产呼吸机。此外,福特还表示会考虑采取新的技术来保护工人,但尚未明确将采取何种新技术,显然也不能保证工人不被感染,后两个问题则更为棘手。鲍姆比克表示:“我们还没讨论过费用问题”,公司也正与医院、政府机构及来自FEMA、CDC和白宫的官员讨论其医疗用品的分配问题。
联邦政府也在越发积极地参与到这一工作中来。4月8日,美国卫生与公众服务部宣布与通用汽车签定了一项价值4.89亿美元的合同,由后者负责在8月底前交付30000台呼吸机。届时,福特或将能够供应大量的医疗用品与个人防护装备。4月13日,福特宣布已开始生产口罩,并将原本用于生产安全气囊的原料用于生产可重复使用的防护服。
随着防护面罩源源不断的从其工厂中出货,玛西也将工作重点转移到了更复杂的医疗设备之上,即一款使用电池供电的空气净化呼吸面罩。福特内部将其称为简版PAPR(电动空气净化呼吸器),PAPR是一种由兜帽、供气软管构成的防护装备,医生有时会在佩戴N95口罩的同时使用这种装备,或者在N95口罩严重短缺的情况下用其代替N95口罩。玛西表示:“我们当时觉得这种物资可能会出现缺口,别家可能生产不了,而福特在这方面恰好拥有很多优势。”
该款PAPR由福特在3M产品的基础上改造而来,并根据3M的建议开发,在4月14日投产前,福特也需要与监管机构进行沟通。福特表示,将在其临近密歇根州夫莱特洛克的弗利兰工厂组装至少10万套PAPR呼吸面罩。
玛西本月早些时候表示:“现在的情况充满了不确定性,病毒的传播速度实在太快了。”这也是疫情笼罩的春天里大家最常说的一句话。
向病毒开战
1940年代,为打赢二战,福特和通用汽车的工厂纷纷转产飞机、坦克。现在,它们与许多汽车行业的同行和其它行业的领导者一样,为抗击新冠疫情转而生产医疗物资。让我们来看看这些企业都在做些什么:
福特
福特每周生产的塑料防护面罩已达100万只,并承诺在7月前生产5万台Airon呼吸机。该公司还在生产3M设计的一款呼吸面罩,同时也在帮助3M和通用电气提升呼吸面罩与呼吸机的产量。
通用汽车
通用汽车向联邦政府承诺将与医疗器械生产厂家Ventec Life Systems携手在8月底前生产3万台呼吸机。除此之外,通用汽车还将生产医用外科口罩,并表示最终产能将达到日产5万只。
施乐
施乐正与Vortran Medical Technology合作生产非ICU用一次性呼吸机,月产能在6月前最高将达20万台。
戴森
戴森向英国政府承诺提供1万台新设计的呼吸机,公司创始人詹姆斯·戴森还表示其个人将再向国际社会额外捐赠5000台呼吸机。
译者:梁宇
审校:夏林
For Marcy Fisher, one of the global pandemic’s biggest and most urgent recent headaches involved a small piece of elastic.
On March 20, Fisher, a Ford Motor lifer who normally oversees the automaker’s global body exterior and interior engineering, became one of about 200 Ford executives and employees facing an urgent new mandate: How could the country’s largest automakers, their massive production lines idled by the threat of spreading infections, pivot into producing desperately needed medical supplies?
Crosstown rival General Motors had already jumped into action, hammering out a partnership with ventilator specialist Ventec Life Systems. Ford CEO Jim Hackett and his deputies consulted with experts at the Mayo Clinic, a medical supplier, and the White House, which was agitating—loudly—for the automakers to get involved. Soon they were strategizing with their counterparts at General Electric and 3M.
While those more complicated devices would take weeks or months to produce, Fisher’s team started with one of the most basic of supplies: the plastic face shields that medical workers use to protect themselves from patients’ infected coughs and other airborne health hazards. Within a day she had a viable design and was talking to suppliers about getting the material to make hundreds of thousands more. The plastic part was simple enough. But when it came to the elastic band that secures the shield onto someone’s head, Ford “ran into a big industry shortage,” Fisher recalls.
The solution, when it came, was gloriously banal. At 4 a.m. on March 26, one of Ford’s suppliers opened up its plant and started extruding a version of the flexible rubber tubing, or weather strips, that you’ll more normally find sealing car doors and windows. “By 8 a.m. we had a prototype,” Fisher says. Within hours, her team was dropping off samples at local hospitals for ER doctors to vet. Within days, Ford had manufactured 100,000 of the final products; by mid-April, it was making 1 million per week. And the elastic substitute? “It’s completely innovative, and it totally works,” says Erin Brennan, an emergency physician at a Detroit hospital, who tested the face shields. “This team has been awesome.”
But that was the easy part. The rest of Ford’s high-speed efforts to turn itself into a medical manufacturer—including a promise to produce 50,000 ventilators by July 4—will be even more complicated and subject to much greater scrutiny.
Ford’s “Project Apollo,” named for the scrappy rescue of the Apollo 13 astronauts, involves cross-industry partnerships with GE, 3M, and many smaller suppliers, as well as the willing participation of more than 750 United Auto Workers members who will operate Ford’s retooled factories. Besides face shields and ventilators, it will yield medical supplies including masks, gowns, and respirators. Few of these devices are simple to design, source components for, or manufacture—especially under the pandemic’s life-and-death deadlines.
“Lives are at stake,” says Jim Baumbick, the Ford vice president of enterprise product line management, who’s overseeing the automaker’s efforts to make medical supplies for COVID-19. “A lot of these machines are incredibly complex, and adding capacity takes time. And time is the enemy.”
That’s especially true for the sophisticated and urgently needed ventilators that help critically ill patients breathe. Traditionally made by a handful of medical-device specialists, ventilators require many more components and are much more regulated than face shields.
In an attempt to streamline the process, Ford and GE decided to focus on an FDA-approved, relatively simple version produced by a small Florida company, Airon. “The key factor is speed and getting as many ventilators as possible to clinicians treating COVID-19 patients,” Tom Westrick, GE Healthcare’s chief quality officer, says in an emailed statement.
It’s completely innovative, and it totally works.
Even these ventilators require about a month of sourcing, design, and regulatory conversations before Ford’s factory workers at the Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti, Mich., can start producing them. Each Airon machine has up to 350 parts, which Adrian Price’s manufacturing team spent a weekend taking apart and 3D-scanning, before starting to look for ways to replicate them on a massive scale. (One substitution: adapting a timer valve usually used in Ford vehicles’ powertrains.)
“When we build a car or truck, the first thing for us as a manufacturing team is to figure out how to build one, and then how to build a few, and then how to build them at rate,” says Price, Ford’s director of global manufacturing core engineering and the executive in charge of its new ventilators, in early April. “And that’s really the process that we’ll be going through over the next couple of weeks.”
Ford expects its internal ventilator production to start the week of April 20, with a goal of making 1,500 ventilators by the end of April; 12,000 by the end of May; and 50,000 within 100 days. (GM will supply 6,000 by the end of May and 30,000 by the end of August.) Still, the effort may not be enough, as experts are predicting the country will need another 14,000 ventilators by mid-April.
“We’re too late to the party,” says Marcus Schabacker, a physician and the head of ECRI, a nonprofit focused on medical devices and patient safety. No matter how many ventilators are actually produced in the next few months, there are other hurdles that no manufacturer can solve, he says—including an equally dire shortage of trained health care personnel that can use them.
The UAW workers who have volunteered to risk the virus and manufacture the ventilators will be working at social-distance levels, and Ford says it is considering new, as-yet-unspecified technology to protect them. But that’s not a guarantee, of course—and the last two questions are even trickier. Baumbick says, “We haven’t spent any time talking about cost,” and adds that Ford is working with a coalition of hospitals and government agencies and officials, including FEMA, the CDC, and the White House, to decide where its medical supplies will go.
“It’s very good and very positive that these companies are stepping forward,” adds Julie Letwat, a health care attorney with McGuireWoods in Chicago. “But the devil’s in the details. Will they have enough workers? Who’s paying for these? How will they be distributed?”
The federal government is also getting more actively involved. On April 8, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that it had given GM a $489 million contract to deliver 30,000 ventilators by the end of August. By then, Ford may be supplying a vast array of medical supplies and personal protective equipment. On April 13 the company announced that it has started making masks, and is turning airbag material into reusable gowns.
Now that the face shields are flying out of its factories, Fisher has turned her focus to a much more complex device: a battery-powered, air-purifying respirator. Internally, Ford calls it a “scrappy” version of a PAPR, the hood-and-air-hose devices that doctors sometimes wear with or in lieu of the N95 masks that are in such short supply. “We thought it was going to be an area of unmet need,” Fisher says. “And it looked like something that not everybody could do, in an area where we have a lot of engineering depth.”
The PAPR design, which Ford has adapted from and is developing with advice from 3M, also required regulatory conversations and testing before Ford could start production on April 14. The company says that it will assemble 100,000 or more of the PAPRs at its Vreeland facility near Flat Rock, Mich.
“Things are very fluid right now,” Fisher said earlier in the month, echoing a common refrain during this coronavirus spring. “It’s just moving so fast.”
Going to war with the virus
In the 1940s, Ford and General Motors switched their factories over to manufacture tanks and airplanes for World War II. Now both are invoking that comparison to make supplies to fight COVID-19, as are some of their fellow automakers and leaders of many other industries. What they’re making:
Ford
Ford is already producing 1 million plastic face shields a week and has promised 50,000 Airon ventilators by July. It’s also making a version of 3M’s respirators and is helping 3M and GE ramp up their own production of respirators and ventilators.
General Motors
General Motors has promised the federal government 30,000 ventilators by the end of August, in partnership with medical-device specialist Ventec Life Systems. GM is also working on surgical masks and says it could eventually make 50,000 a day.
Xerox
Xerox is partnering with Vortran Medical Technology to make up to 200,000 disposable, non-ICU ventilators a month by June.
Dyson
Dyson has promised the U.K. government 10,000 of a newly designed ventilator, and founder James Dyson has said he will donate another 5,000 internationally.