Industrial giant 3M played a critical role in supplying needed medical supplies and personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now the manufacturer is urging the federal government to take steps to improve and diversify its national stockpile, so that next time the country is better prepared.
"We learned a ton through the COVID-19 pandemic, but we also had a lot of expertise dealing with pandemics before," John Banovetz, chief technology officer at 3M, told Cheddar. "H1N1, SARS, all helped us prepare. We've learned a lot. We learned a lot about the importance of collaboration. We learned a lot about the importance of just being prepared."
In preparing for future pandemics, Banovetz said the U.S. should focus on "management, manufacturing, and mobility." Specifically, a recent report from 3M recommended making sure a national stockpile is "mandated and funded," working with law enforcement to fight fraud and price gouging, and establishing emergency budgets and use authorizations.
He also stressed that the government should strive for supply chain flexibility.
"As a company, for instance, we've prepared our supply chains," he said. "We went to a regional kind of manufacturing model, in which we were able to respond anywhere in the word around PPE requirements or demand for N95s."
3M has also prioritized partnerships, such as those with the Department of Defense, which worked with the company to boost production of needed supplies for the pandemic.
Banovetz explained that 3M did have "some surge capacity" built into its global and U.S. supply chains during the early days of the outbreak, but "nothing prepared [us] for the COVID-19 pandemic that hit and the high demands that you saw in such a short time."
Over the span of the pandemic, the company has supplied over a billion respirators to the U.S. and is currently making 95 million more per month after a significant ramp-up.
"We've quadrupled our production in that short time frame, but demand continues to outstrip supply across the entire industry," he said. "But we're doing everything we can to close that gap and supply the PPE, particularly to the frontline workers and the healthcare workers around the country."
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
Summer is upon us, which means weddings, trips overseas, and trips to see Taylor Swift. Avoid a “Cruel Summer” with these budget-friendly tips and tricks.
While Nvidia's meteoric rise led it to briefly dethrone Microsoft as the world's biggest public company, there's a lot more going on in this market than A.I.
