I have a question that has been bothering me for a couple of days now.
Why should GM be making ventilators?
As I understand it, GM makes mostly cars and trucks and things. Medical equipment is not cars and trucks.
Why is GM being asked to re-tool a factory to make ventilators? Aren’t there other companies (some of whom might be suppliers to GM I guess) that make plastic and electronics and stuff that could be re-purposed into ventilator production lines?
It would seem that a GM factory would not be ideal for making things like ventilators. Or am I wrong about that?
A few points, admittedly just slightly above the level of ‘stuff I’ve heard’.
GM is doing this in cooperation with an existing maker of ventilators, who, presumably, will be providing considerable engineering assistance and, possibly, components for assembly.
My impression is that GM would not be using an automobile assembly plant but an in-house electronics plant that is much closer to a ‘clean’ facility. Mr. Trump seems to have gotten this aspect a bit a bit garbled (yes, inconceivable, I know).
During WW II US automobile manufacturers geared up to make all sorts of other things (Ford and GM built aircraft. Packard and Studebaker built aero engines, and so on). While not quite so different in character as GM switching to ventilators, this wasn’t a simple process and was done fairly successfully on a short time frame.
I’ll leave discussion of the potential ‘too little, too late’ aspects of this plan to others.
That makes more sense. Re-tooling from making a car engine to make an airplane (non-jet) engine sounds easier than re-tooling from building a truck to building a ventilator.
But if GM is planning to make ventilators in an electronics plant, that sounds quite do-able.
If the choice was made intelligently, it would be because GM has some flexible assembly lines that can be rapidly reconfigured, or because GM is already making some parts that are very similar such as the plumbing, pumps, motors and valves that go into air conditioning systems. Maybe some clever engineer figured out a way to rapidly reconfigure some assembly line for such things into a ventilator assembly.
Also, they are probably happy to do it because demand for new cars is currenty about zero, and they’d rather keep a factory running making ventilators than shutter it completely.
The HVAC systems of vehicles are a good jumping off point.
Fans, tubing, controls, sensors, etc. Far from 100% fit but at least you wouldn’t be trying to convert a transmission production line into making ventilators.
The problem is that this all a couple months late.
I think this has a lot to do with it. GM may need a bailout or at least assistance in the future. To be able to argue they helped and cooperated will go a long way to getting it.
That’s not crass. Good PR is a good thing. You can’t be shamed for wanting to do good, nor for wanting others to laud your for the good you’ve done. Nobody gets hurt. If GM saves lives, we should throw them a victory parade*. It’s more than the KC Chiefs ever did.
I’m quite sure that GM can accommodate the manufacturing process of ventilators, most likely with little disruption of their many product lines. When you consider ALL the factories GM has had over the years, and then counted up the many factories they have closed, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that GM could set up a working respirator factory someplace and use equipment culled from active and inactive product lines. Most cars and trucks carry sophisticated computers onboard. The biggest issue would probably be programming, and all things considered, programming isn’t really an issue. And 3D printers can do any-damn-thing. I mean, if you can get the 3D printer plans of an AR15 off the internet, I’m sure it’s no biggie to find plans for a respirator.
I’ve read that GM has been “ordered” to make ventilators. The only explanation I can think of for that is that by “compelling” them to make ventilators, there must be some legislative/funding/auditing/tendering requirement that is avoided.
It’s not nearly that easy. ‘Flex’ lines can handle different products if they are the same along whatever variables are necessary, but you can’t just take a line made for producing, say, fan blades and make it produce impellers for a ventilator.
Product changeovers on a typical assembly line can take months. Machines have to be calibrated and adjusted. Material supply chains have to be set up. Intermediate materials have to be created elsewhere (none of these lines produce complex products from scratch - A ventilator assembly line will use a hose assembly, motor mount assembly, whatever. Those have to be sourced and built.
For any medical device, the paperwork and regulatory burdens are intense. I imagine some of that is being waived this time, but you don’t want a ventilator that has tiny plastic particles or machine oil or other contaminants in it.
At a minimum, you don’t just need a hacker to change over a line. You need process engineers to design the changeover requirements and steps and implement control plans. You need programmers to build up the assembly model in whatever control system you are using. You need inventory management, and packaging, and costing, and… Dozens of people are involved.
3D printing is not a panacea here - at least, not yet. It’s too slow, the plastic filaments have various issues depending on type, it’s not necessarily repeatable in strength, you need testing and approval for medical use of 3D printed parts, etc. It could be used in some places, such as printing cases or supports, but internal parts that come in contact with air flow? Probably not.
I suspect the GM ventilator assembly will be a bit of a kluge. Rather than setting up a full, proper assembly line they’ll repurpose what components they can, set up assembly lines only for the pieces that absolutely require it, and inject a lot of manual assembly steps where changeover is too hard to do quickly.
Here is the website for Ventec, the company that GM is working with. The homepage includes an exploded drawing of their device. To be honest, I don’t see much similarity between it and a car or light truck, so I don’t know what GM brings to the partnership. Also, the design includes a lithium-ion battery and a touchscreen LCD control panel. Can production of those parts be vastly expanded quickly? I doubt it. But what about eliminating the battery and making the new device AC-only? And perhaps switch to another control panel? For example, I’m considering getting a travel CPAP machine and the ResMed AirMini has no control panel, instead relying on the user’s smartphone for an interface.
As for that, the MyPillow factory is making cotton face masks, so not so different from making cotton pillowcases. I think it’s a much bigger leap for General Motors to make ventilators.