Neil Wright from GBS Clinic explains how industry mobilisation prevented a ventilator supply crisis.
In mid-March, at the start of the lockdown and amidst peak uncertainty around the virulence of the coronavirus, the British prime minister Boris Johnson hosted an emergency telephone conference with over 60 UK manufacturing companies. The plan of action was to manufacture more ventilators - and fast.
Breathing easier
At the time, the National Health Service (NHS) is believed to have possessed little over 8,000 ventilators and - although the infrastructure was in place to quickly double that number - even that was inadequate for the 30,000 minimum that the models from Imperial College London were projecting.
The conference was followed by a flurry of activity, in which companies of all sizes began working on making new ventilators, with the biggest collective effort coming from the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium, which encompasses BAE Systems, Ford Motor Company, and even some Formula One racing teams.
VentilatorChallengeUK
The ambition of the consortium cannot be overstated. After some initial information blackouts, it was eventually revealed in late-March that the plan was to manufacture two types of ventilators.
One was a completely new prototype, based on existing technologies that can be readily assembled from parts and materials already pre-made for (and being diverted from) other manufacturing equipment.
The other ventilator already existed - and the consortium’s plan was to put considerable effort in place for additional manufacturing support, and to assemble facilities in order to ramp up and abet production.
In order to deliver on both ambitions, the consortium had to look for parts that could not be disrupted from supply chains overseas. And so, the materials and parts for both ventilators were sourced from the UK.
Making use of new support technology
Some of the most contemporary tools in the history of manufacturing were being called on to deliver the huge numbers of ventilators, including Vuforia augmented-reality technology, and Microsoft’s HoloLens mixed-reality headsets. The hope is that both will help to capture crucial steps and processes along the way of assembly.
Other inventive ways of meeting demand
Elsewhere, another approach has provided a testament to the will of corporations and academics, when the urge is there. Such as the collaboration between the F1 team Mercedes, University College London, and nearby hospitals.
This group reverse-engineered what is known as Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) device that was already enjoying use in Italy and China, in order to set about manufacturing it in the UK without the need to rely on foreign supply chains susceptible to shutting down. It took less than six weeks for the device to complete clinical trials, and for a production target of 1,000 a day to get up and running.
The CPAP device makes pre-existing ventilators more powerful, reducing the need for other models, specifically more powerful, to be built on their own.
The most impressive feat, however, comes from outside the UK. In New York state, a company called PVA managed to design a completely new ventilator of their own in just a few days. The manufacturing outfit achieved this by re-orientating its multi-axis automated robotic production equipment towards the manufacturing of medical equipment. It only took a couple of days for the design team - starting completely from scratch - to come up with a viable prototype without external help.
Conclusion
Thankfully, looking back on that long stretch since March, the pandemic never reached critical levels in the UK for such a large number of ventilators to be depended upon. But, echoing James Dyson’s words to his colleagues following the government’s decision to suspend use of his CoVent, we can only be immeasurably thankful to the hard work and the determination of the men and women working around the clock to prevent the unthinkable.