Ford Motor Company partnered with 3M in March to develop powered air-purifying respirators and personal protective equipment, and now the supplies are on their way to frontline healthcare workers dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic across the country.
Jim Baumbick, vice president of enterprise product line management at Ford, told Cheddar on Wednesday that the company began shipping respirators to hospitals on Monday and has the capability of producing 12,000 units a week.
"We've prepared to actually build all of the elements of personal protection and ventilators as long as necessary, even as we start to roll in to return to work and crank up the production sites for our normal products," Baumbick said.
Ford is certainly not known for making respirators, but the vice president said they are still ensuring the highest quality in their products as if they were making their normal devices.
"We're taking all kinds of our normal quality approach and standards," Baumbick said. "We're used to building very very complex devices at very high volumes," he said.
In the last 45 days, Ford Motor Company has shipped more than 12 million face shields and 300,000 hospital gowns, which have been in high demand, to cities across the country, according to Baumbick.
"We learned a lot about things like gowns," he said. "This is where getting innovative, thinking about using airbag material, as an example, has enabled us to develop a gown, an isolation gown for these ICU wards, that is reusable, washable up to 50 times," Baumbick said.
Much like all the upheaval shaking the world, the huge swings rocking Wall Street may feel far from normal. But, for investing at least, this is normal.
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
