SPECIAL FOCUS UPDATE MEDICAL & PHARMACEUTICAL PRODUCTS, TECHNOLOGIES AND SERVICES TO HELP IN THE FIGHT AGAINST COVID-19 Ramping up ventilator production
Operational consultancy Newton Europe and PDM specialist Quick Release are supporting Penlon to significantly increase ventilator
production. Here, we find out how the companies have been working as part of the Ventilator
Challenge UK Consortium to ramp-up production from 60 ventilators to 1,500 per week
O
perational consultancy Newton Europe and product data management (PDM) specialist
Quick Release have joined forces to support the Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium in the national response to COVID-19. Their combined expertise in operational excellence, supply chain mobilisation and transformation programme management have played a pivotal role in rapidly increasing production of Penlon’s ESO2 device – the first emergency ventilator to reach UK hospitals.
THE VENTILATOR CHALLENGE The Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium is a large group of companies that have come together to produce medical ventilators for the UK. Those involved are industrial, technology and engineering companies from across the automotive, aviation and medical sectors. There are several groups involved, and Newton and Quick Release are working in the Penlon group. Based in Oxfordshire, the Penlon group has
achieved approval from the UK’s healthcare regulator for its ESO2 device, adapted from existing anaesthesia products. Penlon has since received a formal order from the Government for 15,000 machines. Penlon and another specialist manufacturer,
Smiths, are usually able to produce between 50-60 ventilators per week. However, thanks to the scale and resources of the wider consortium, the companies are targeting a combined output of at least 1,500 units a week. This has been made possible by combining specialist product knowledge and engineering skill with the physical assets and human resources of large companies such as Ford, Airbus and DHL. Newton and Quick Release’s responsibility
can be broadly split into two areas. The first phase looked at identifying the fastest route to regulatory sign-off and then driving urgency behind the critical tasks. The consultancies then shifted their focus to look at unblocking the rate-limiting parts or processes needed for high- volume manufacture – smoothing the way for factories across the country to build ventilators. To overcome the barriers of scaling production
in such a complex and fast-moving environment, Newton and Quick Release deployed experts to design the right analytical tools, implement
18 MAY 2020 | DESIGN SOLUTIONS
processes and facilitate effective communication across multiple businesses to quickly fix issues that may impact production. For example, when the team discovered a critical part was being produced below the required rate, they found a new supplier who could produce at a higher frequency, validated their quality assurance process, checked their samples and reviewed their capability to onboard them within 24 hours. The team has also ensured the transfer of
skills and knowledge from a small number of staff at Penlon to thousands of people across the Ventilator Challenge UK Consortium. To help with this, resources are being provided to train over 300 new staff, with support being provided to many more people. In addition, the team further optimised production by bringing in staff to work at different times of the day and sourced the necessary facilities for them to work under social distancing requirements.
goal. There were no egos, everyone shared information and we all harnessed our different strengths. It’s inspirational what can be achieved when there’s the right team with the right values all driving towards a focused goal. “The work the Ventilator Challenge UK
consortium is delivering will undoubtedly save lives and I’m immensely proud of the role the Newton team is playing.” Ian Quest, director of Quick Release, added:
“Sprinting a marathon is a fitting analogy for what the consortium’s achieved in just four weeks; a more usual development and approval timeframe would be around 18 months, so delivering the first shipment in around 6% of the regular time is a credit to all involved. “We’ve focused on curating information that
can inform and drive action. The foundation of this is product data quality, which is where our Bill of Materials (BoM) management and validation work has paid dividends across the whole project cycle. Similarly, the lightweight Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system, designed from scratch in under a week – which comprises 13,000 lines of code – focuses on what is needed to drive action.” Dick Elsy, head of the Ventilator Challenge
“THE SINGLE BIGGEST MANUFACTURING CHALLENGE I’VE EVER SEEN” Tom Wedgwood, founding director of Newton, said: “This is the single biggest manufacturing challenge I’ve ever seen – in fact, it’s the challenge of a lifetime. “Developing a new ventilator design and
achieving certification is an achievement in itself. But assembling a consortium of 12 businesses, with nine new sites, over 2,000 people, building a global supply chain and scaling-up from producing tens of machines to thousands per week – all in the space of two months – is unprecedented. “This was only possible due to the strong
leadership and teamwork of everyone involved, as well as the group being aligned to a single
UK consortium and CEO of High Value Manufacturing Catapult, said: “Newton and Quick Release’s work to define and manage the end- to-end process meant the Penlon consortium could be clear on how dozens of companies across the consortium would come together to increase production at pace. “When the call came from the Government,
it meant that specialist manufacturers such as Penlon and Smiths needed to significantly ramp- up production of a complex device at a rate never seen before. Newton and Quick Release’s support in making data-driven decisions has quickly resolved any bottlenecks and meant the consortium companies have been able to get on with building the parts needed in record time. The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium is an example of the UK’s finest engineering firms coming together in the fight against COVID-19.”
Newton Europe Penlon
Quick Release
www.newtoneurope.com
www.penlon.com
www.quickrelease.co.uk
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