The most commonly talked about subject over the last three years, ‘Brexit’ has rapidly been replaced by Coronavirus….and subsequently ‘unprecedented’. As soon as the government turned to industry for help, Project Pitlane and Ventilator Challenge UK were set-up, developing devices with medical experts and then turning to our beloved industry at breakneck speeds. ‘Beaming Pride’ is just one of the platitudes the MTD team would like to heap on our manufacturing industry for how it has responded.
With the repetitive negative media narrative at the daily briefings – many of us switched-off a long time ago. So, what have we done? In less than 100 hours, engineers and clinicians at Project Pitlane designed, developed and manufactured the CPAP breathing device. Developed by Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains (HPP), the University College London (UCL) and clinicians at UCL Hospital (UCLH); the device has been produced at a rate of 1000 per day and the design and production data are all ‘open source’ for governments and health organisations worldwide to benefit from.
Set-up for more complicated ventilator production, the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium had the ‘unprecedented’ task of ‘producing as many additional ventilators for the NHS as quickly as possible’. To offer some perspective, Penlon and Smiths have a combined production capacity of 50-60 a week, the consortium rapidly hit its target of 1500+ a week. By mid-April, revised Penlon designs had been authorised by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for use. The government instantly ordered 15,000 devices. Simultaneously, the Smith’s paraPAC plus ventilator model ramped its production up to 80 paraPAC devices in a week with a significant ‘scale-up’ into the hundreds during the subsequent weeks. The consortium set-up production lines at Broughton (Airbus), Dagenham (Ford) and Woking (McLaren) among others.
Feeding into these production lines is the subcontract supply chain. You can read about some of their proud efforts in this issue or turn to our social media feeds for details. Of course, there is a wider concern here – the future. When the dust settles on the Ventilator Challenge UK and PPE production is no longer an urgent requirement, how will we return to any semblance of normal? Whilst the short term future may be a challenge, the longer term will surely make us look at things differently and who knows; I’d like to see the next buzzword move from Brexit and Coronavirus to unprecedented levels of ‘re-shoring’.
Karl Creamer
Head of publishing/advertising sales
T: 07714 660885 E: karl@mtdcnc.com
Rhys Williams
Associate Editor
E: editorial@mtdcnc.com