Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business, delivered free to your inbox.
It’s not quite making dresses out of curtains—yet—but as Ford Motor Co. Makes more medical supplies for the global pandemic, it seems to be taking creative inspiration from The Sound of Music.
Like General Motors, which last week was awarded a $489 million government contract to make ventilators, Ford is already switching some of its idled assembly lines from car components to breathing machines. On Monday, the automaker revealed that it is also producing a slew of other medical supplies, including face masks and—paging the Von Trapps—reusable gowns that will be made out of a silicone-coated nylon Ford usually deploys quite differently.
“It is in fact the same material that we use in our vehicles for our airbags,” Marcy Fisher, Ford’s director of global body exterior and interior engineering, said during a conference call with reporters.
“It actually has the qualities that we need” for liquid permeability, and can be washed and reused up to 50 times, Fisher added. “This is really a great find,” she said. “We can take something that we already knew how to produce, and then turn that into isolation gowns.”
Her company, which designed the gowns in consultation with a local Detroit hospital, said its airbag supplier expects to cut and sew 1.3 million of them by early July. The automaker also set goals on Monday for production of face masks, which it will distribute internally and seek to certify for medical use; and for a battery-powered air-purifying respirator, or PAPR, that it has developed with 3M.
Ford is not yet disclosing its budget for making all of these supplies. “We’ve been approving a lot of things on what we call a ‘not-to-exceed’ number,” Fisher told Coins2Day in an interview earlier this month.
More coronavirus coverage from Coins2Day:
—How Coins2Day 500 companies are utilizing their resources and expertise during the pandemic
—When will stimulus checks be deposited or mailed? Ensure yours is not delayed
—Why Apple and Google are pushing Bluetooth in their alliance against the coronavirus
—The 2020 presidential election can survive coronavirus if we take these 3 steps
—There are 32 authorized coronavirus tests so far—here’s how they differ
—PODCAST: COVID-19 might have upended the concept of the best companies of the year
—VIDEO: 401(k) withdrawal penalties waived for anyone hurt by COVID-19
Subscribe to Outbreak, a daily newsletter roundup of stories on the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on global business. It’s free to get it in your inbox.