Factories pivot to fight virus, but new challenges abound
Factories that crank out cars and trucks looking into making much-needed ventilators. Distilleries intended for whiskey and rum to instead turn out hand sanitizers and disinfectants. And an electronics maker that builds display screens repurposed for surgical masks.
All are answering the call of duty amid a pandemic that has so far claimed more than 11,000 lives and sickened 260,000 people globally.
But redirecting plants to make completely different products will take a long time and a huge effort — possibly too long for some companies to help with medical gear shortages that are becoming more acute every day.
“When you are repurposing a factory, it really depends on how similar the new product is to the existing products in your product line,” said Kaitlin Wowak, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who focuses on industrial supply chains. “It’s going to be a substantial pivot to start producing an entirely different item.”
On Friday, President Donald Trump said he invoked the Korean War-era Defense Production Act, which allows the government to marshal the private sector to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. But he did not give examples as to how he was using it.
At a news conference Saturday, Trump singled out GM and Ford as among the many businesses that have asked to start making medical gear like ventilators, the need for which he said has grown into the hundreds of thousands.
“Nobody’s ever heard of a thing like that. With that being said, General Motors, Ford, so many companies — I had three calls yesterday directly, without having to institute like `You will do this’ — these companies are making them right now,” Trump said.
Neither automaker, however, is building ventilators at present. GM announced on Friday that it is working with ventilator maker Ventec Life Systems to ramp up production. The automaker said it would help with logistics, purchasing and manufacturing, but stopped short of saying it would make ventilators in its own factories, which have been idled for two weeks after workers who’d been fearful of contagion put pressure on the company.
Crosstown rival Ford, which also suspended factory production, confirmed that it too was in discussions with the Trump administration about helping.
“We’re looking at feasibility,” Ford spokesman T.R. Reid said. “It may be possible, but it’s not you go from Rangers (small pickups) one day to ventilators the next. We’re figuring out what is possible now.”
Ford and Rolls-Royce PLC also are working with the British government to see if they can switch over their factories.
Although the government can steer factories to overcome shortages, makers of heavy goods such as cars and trucks can’t just flip a switch and produce something else.
It would be difficult to get ventilator or even surgical mask designs, line up parts supplies and train workers to make them in a short period, said Jorge Alvarado, a professor in the Engineering Technology and Industrial Distribution Department at Texas A&M University. And auto plants generally aren’t clean enough to make medical equipment.
Companies also would have to find mask or ventilator manufacturers willing to share knowledge, expertise and even factory workers to transfer production elsewhere, Alvarado said.
Other industries may be better equipped to help with the virus. Rum producer Bacardi, for example, said its distillery in Puerto Rico has shifted to making ethanol needed to produce hand sanitizer. Small U.S. distilleries such as Eight Oaks Farm in Pennsylvania are converting operations to make disinfectant.