Around the world, manufacturers are mobilizing to to fight the spread of COVID-19 by repurposing their facilities to produce critical supplies.
Manufacturers are switching from making cars, whiskey, and cosmetics to producing medical supplies, hand sanitizer, and masks in the international battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
The pivots are reminiscent of the way manufacturers such as Chrysler and General Motors shifted to making fuselages, guns, and tanks during World War II. Eighty years later, the world is uniting against a silent, invisible threat that is wreaking a path of destruction across the globe.
Let’s look at how the manufacturing industry are altering their operations to battle the spread of the coronavirus.
Here’s how manufacturers are pivoting to fight COVID-19:
Telsa, General Motors, and Ford are working on plans to make ventilators and other medical equipment.
Parts suppliers for General Motors are putting aside their normally competitive relationships and starting to shift to making the parts for 200,00 or more ventilators to help alleviate the projected shortage of the machines as the pandemic grows. In addition, GM is teaming with joint-venture partner SAIC Motor to make machines to produce surgical masks in China.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV plans to convert one of its plants in China to the production of face masks that the company will donate to health-care workers in the United States.
Ford is teaming with 3M and GE Healthcare to make medical equipment. Ford said it will assemble more than 100,000 plastic face shields per week at one of its manufacturing sites, and work with 3M to boost production of its powered air-purifying respirator designs as well as a simplified version of GE Healthcare’s ventilator design. Ford also plans to use its in-house 3D printing capability to produce disposable respirators for healthcare workers.
LVMH, which owns luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, has shifted its perfume and makeup factories to production of hand sanitizer for French healthcare facilities. The company also is buying 40 million health masks to help France’s health service.
Diagnostics manufacturers with US government approval are now producing COVID-19 diagnostic tests to help fill the gap in US testing. The manufacturers, which include Abbott Laboratories and Roche, are ramping up fast, with the goal of producing millions of tests weekly by the end of March.
Distillers across the US and mega-brewery Anheuser-Busch are shifting their production from spirits to hand sanitizer.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers are shifting their focus to testing and treatment for coronavirus. The list includes GeoVax, which is using its vaccine platform to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 and AbbVie, which has partnered with global authorities to support the use of HIV medicines to treat COVID-19.
Emily Morrow contributed to this report.
