Ten years worth of ventilators are being made in nearly 10 weeks to cope with demand from Covid-19, the head of a consortium of manufacturers has said.
The VentilatorChallengeUK (VCUK) consortium was formed in mid-March following calls for companies to shift production to ventilators.
He told the PA news agency: “We’ve only been together for just over a month and we’ve achieved in a month what would normally take 18 months or two years.
“The consortium brings together the pace of engineering of Formula 1, the robust manufacturing processes of big industry like Rolls-Royce and Airbus and the exacting standards of clinical device manufacturing.”
With the work of the consortium, production of newly-adapted ventilators will be up to 1,500 per week by next month and the Government has placed orders for 20,000 units.
Mr Elsy said: “We’re going to get through sort of 10 years worth of ventilator production in almost as many weeks. It’s a major industrial scale-up.”
The ventilator, which is based on an existing model, was approved for use in hospitals on April 16 after adjustments were made following feedback from clinicians.
“As they’re learning about patients with the disease in hospital, they’re finding out new things all the time so they asked for some additional functionality which we were able to engineer in within 24 hours,” Mr Elsy added.
Around 250 units have been sent out so far, including to the NHS Nightingale Hospital in London, and 15,000 of the Penlon model have been ordered by the Government.
Mr Elsy said: “If more are required and we need stuff faster we can put extra facilities in if necessary but it seems to be in a balanced place at the moment where we’re producing for the Government’s demand.”
Ventilator production in the consortium involves around 3,000 staff from 20 companies in 10 sites.
The group’s head added: “The whole thing is being driven by people who are on top of their game at managing complicated programmes whether that’s putting aeroplanes in the sky or winning races.
“The number of people assembling ventilators is more than would assemble a Ford Fiesta, we’re having to industrialise to that level to produce the systems.”
“There’s a sense of pride that we’ve managed to pull this into what look like very sensible numbers,” he added.
Mr Elsy, who is chief executive of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, said the group’s work had prompted international interest and he was convinced the collaboration would continue post-pandemic.
