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Posted on 03/18/2020 4:45:10 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Wednesday that General Motors CEO Mary Barra offered the automakers’ shuttered factories to produce ventilators to address the coronavirus crisis.
Barra reportedly made several suggestions for how GM could assist the government, including using factory space for ventilator production, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg, adding that the government has yet to formally request the use of GM facilities.
The automaker “is working to help find solutions for the nation during this difficult time and has offered to help, and we are already studying how we can potentially support production of medical equipment like ventilators,” GM spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan told Reuters.
It remains unclear how long it would take for the manufacturer to develop ventilator manufacturing capabilities, but such a move has precedent both for the company and the coronavirus pandemic.
GM and other auto manufacturers revamped plants for tank production during World War II, while a number of companies have offered assistance during the pandemic in China, including Apple, Foxconn and joint venture automaker SAIC-GM-Wuling Automobile Co., which said they had developed production lines for manufacturing medical clothing and masks, according to Reuters.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
It remains unclear how long it would take for the manufacturer to develop ventilator manufacturing capabilities,>>>>>>>>>>>>>
About two weeks. In a month they could crank out 1000 per day.
Excellent! Dry much like WW2: retool factories, retrain workers, begin producing needed goods. No complaints, just get to work.
Robots can building anything they are programmed to build.
I don’t know how many of their hvac and pollution control systems are made in-house. Probably outsourced. But im sure they have tool and die guys to make injection molding tooling for plastic and rubber components.
And FEA and design and manufacturing engineers to design the volumetric flow pumps, circuits and valves....
Hopefully they could just manufacture under a liscence agreement and just create their own independent tooling. But Im sure the cleanliness and quality/compliance engineering would be the biggest ‘ob stac al’.
China does not buy American products.
They just don’t.
You need to wake up about China.
As do a LOT of Americans.
Medical requirements will really slow things down. This aint China. :(
Robots can building anything they are programmed to build.
You nailed it. This crisis is utter BS. We don’t minimize or have a lack of regard but know full well that this thing is becoming a scam.
The piece parts could be made on the floor, but you will need clean rooms to assemble all the subassemblies and final assembly and package them. The clean rooms must be planned, compliant ventilation ordered and delivered, installed, pressurization monitoring instruments to ensure positive pressure, compliance testing, cleanroom staff training, equiping....
Lots of stuff can be done in parallel, but it will take weeks to get all this stuff ready before the first prototypes can be kicked out. Then verification testing can start.
How many months to train a tech to operate the machine??
They can start by contacting an existing manufacturer of ventilators and get help identifying the parts, tools, and procedures needed to turn out working units. The parts for an initial run should already be on the way. The ventilator manufacturer should make key people available to help get this production line started.
Critical path items should be identified; that is, what part or process will dictate a limit on how many units can be manufactured.
It may be that the ventilator manufacturer can more quickly ramp up production at their own site than at GM's. Sometimes when you ask "which way should we go" the answer is "both". Sometimes it's not.
Let's get this American "Can Do It" spirit working instead of curtailing our liberty and destroying our economy.
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Shut their plants down, right with the timing of the expedited Bailout package announcement. What a coincidence.
Not with UAW workers they’re not. They all clocked out and went home to shelter-in-place. OK, maybe that was a cheap shot. But how is a company that has trouble making money building cars going to make money building ventilators? Especially when the government is going to re-enable the emargency war production act and simply dictate the price? Somebody is smoking something at GM.
Medical requirements will really slow things down.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nothing can slow it down. Just get ‘er done pronto:
“Defense Production Act”
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/18/21185333/coronavirus-defense-production-act-trump
1. I doubt GM is in the plastic injection molding processes. That would be a Tier 1 supplier, not done in-house so to speak.
2. It takes months to build a plastic injection mold. That could be shortened, yes. But the supply chains for key materials are shaky right now. Better move on this yesterday.
I used to work in sales in a related area of manufacturing -- metal stamping -- and as such I was in/out of a lot of tool & die shops. A few of those built molds as well as stamping dies. Dirty little secret: Most of those shops I called on are long gone.
Trump has every incentive to pay whatever it takes to get them made in time. It will be interesting to see how fast it gets done.
The old Trump staffers are always talking about “Trump time” in that he wanted things done immediately.
Lots of equipment can be programmed/modified for different uses - else they’d have to retool with every minor body/structural change.
We do aluminum molds in days.....can’t get near as many shots, but just make lots of molds.
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