Renishaw, a multinational company in the field of engineering and technology, began mass production of key components for medical ventilators, and worked with all walks of life across the country to fully support the British National Medical Service (NHS) in fighting the new coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19) epidemic. Renishaw has allocated a large part of its production facilities in Gloucestershire and South Wales to produce precision machined parts for two different ventilators manufactured by Ventilator Challenge UK. In the past two weeks, the Renishaw plant has been operating around the clock, and the project team, manufacturing engineering team and production team have made great efforts.
Renishaw actively responds to the call of the British government and is committed to greatly increasing the output of ventilators for the treatment of patients with new coronavirus pneumonia who suffer from respiratory complications. In just a few weeks, the demand for ventilators in the UK has soared to tens of thousands.
Renishaw’s response work was led by Marc Saunders, Group Strategic Development Director. He said: “When the government contacted us, we actively responded to the government’s call. Although we understand the enormity of this challenge. The ventilator is a very complex medical device, but we believe that we can use our own advantages and existing technology. Help expand the production scale of ventilators. Renishaw and many other industrial companies coincide and realize that everyone needs to work together to unite production capacity to achieve this huge goal.”
In just a few days, Renishaw formed the VentilatorChallengeUK alliance with leading companies in the aerospace, automotive, medical equipment, and racing fields, and was run by the Chief Executive Officer of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (High Value Manufacturing Catapult) of the British Manufacturing Research Center Group Officer Dick Elsy leads. This diversified alliance is working tirelessly to increase the output of two mature and reliable ventilators selected by the NHS.
These two ventilators are manufactured in the UK by Penlon and Smiths Medical. Dick Elsy said: “Under normal circumstances, Penlon and Smiths together produce 50 to 60 ventilators per week. Now, relying on the alliance’s scale and resource advantages, our goal is to integrate Penlon and Smiths within a few weeks. The weekly output of the two models produced has increased to at least 1,500 units. Ventilators are highly sophisticated and complex medical equipment. We must strike a balance between the speed of delivery and absolute compliance with regulatory standards to ensure patient safety. One thing is very important.”
Renishaw joins the supplier network organized by the alliance. Many of the suppliers in this network, like Renishaw, manufacture parts for ventilator for the first time. Each ventilator contains hundreds of various parts and components, and when mass production of the ventilator needs to assemble millions of parts together, this is a huge logistical work.
Renishaw Group Manufacturing Services Director Gareth Hankins said: “To prepare for the current tasks-including ventilator projects and serving critical supply chain global customers, we temporarily closed our local production facilities in the UK last week to take relevant measures. Protect the interests of employees.”
He continued: “We have reorganized the factory, increased spacing and divided areas to restrict employees from moving around the factory. We have also strengthened hygiene management to greatly reduce the potential risk of infection transmission. Our employees are actively responding to this. One challenge, we are very happy to see the factory resume operation and contribute to the’ventilator operation’.”
Marc Saunders said: “These are very unusual weeks. Many companies from different fields have quickly and effectively united and worked together to the same goal. The VentilatorChallengeUK alliance is working hard to increase the production of urgently needed ventilators with amazing determination and resources. Help fight the virus that affects mankind.”
He concluded: “The alliance’s slogan is’Each ventilator produced, save one more life’, and Renishaw is proud to contribute to this important work.”
(Editor in charge: admin)
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