|
The answer here is it's pretty complicated.
You're not going to take a robotics driven line that assembles body panels and engines and reprogram it to make ventilators. That being said, a large auto OEM has many avenues of production with moderate to low automation that could be used with a short turn around, some as little as a few weeks.
Also consider there's a difference between assembling a finished product versus making components. Parts like stamped, machined or molded plastic housings and frames could be produced pretty fast since you already have the designs available and just need to reprogram machines. Today you can go from design to tool to part very quickly when you need to. Electronics may or may not be a bottleneck, PCB's can get made at warp speed if the components are available thought domestic capacity is limited. The other concern may be specialty components like a bellows (or equivalent) for a vent that require special manufacturing and materials.
Another big challenge is the training and quality processes. If good electronic work instructions are available you could bring up line manufacturing workers pretty quickly. Optimizing a factory floor for material flow takes more time. The manufacturing documentation around quality for an automobile vs medical device though are totally different. A ventilator is a class 2 device so it requires very detailed tracking of not just the design quality but every single manufacturing process and quality control at every step through to finished product.
So even if you were starting with a proven design for a device including manufacturing -- note this is likely a corporations intellectual property -- retooling to volume production isn't trivial. It could make more sense for cross over manufacturers to help with the supply chain and leave the final assembly and testing to the medical industry...perhaps they have some innovative ideas though.
|