Ex-auto executive answers UK call to service

Dick Elsy was looking forward to retirement from his job running Europe's largest advanced manufacturing research institution. Then, the coronavirus arrived and sent the 60-year-old into a 12-week sprint of marathon workdays.

Faced with a shortage of ventilators as the number of COVID-19 cases was growing, the U.K. government in early March rallied the nation's private sector to repurpose factories and R&D centers to build the lifesaving medical equipment.

The need was urgent and daunting. Hospitals had about 6,000 ventilators, but the government's COVID-19 modeling suggested about 20,000 would be needed to handle the expected volume of critically ill patients.

Elsy, CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, hit pause on his retirement plans and rolled up his sleeves to help tackle the national health emergency.

The former Jaguar Land Rover and BMW executive organized the VentilatorChallengeUK — a consortium of 33 businesses from the aerospace, automotive, motorsport and medical sectors that marshaled their factories and work forces to assemble ventilators.

"We help companies with complex manufacturing technologies," Elsy said of his day job running the research center. "I knew the sort of people to get together to rise to this challenge."

Over three months, industrial powerhouses such as Airbus, Ford and Siemens came together to turbocharge production of two ventilator devices. One was an existing design made by Smiths Group, the other a new device based on an adaptation of technology from a small anesthesia equipment maker, Penlon.

The initiative's scale — like its mission — was mammoth, involving 5,500 people working around the clock across nine sites. Over 12 weeks, the coalition built 13,437 ventilators — or about 20 years of production.

The leadership team self-organized around the task. People were picked for their skills and passions, with a flat workstream structure.

"We delegated responsibilities to the fittest athletes — to the people who had the best capability," Elsy said. "Stripes and seniority counted for nothing. Outcomes were everything."

The focus was on output and the learning curve was steep. Ventilator peak production exceeded 400 devices a day; the shortest time spent to build 1,000 ventilators was less than three days.

The auto industry brought its manufacturing prowess and product management chops to the mission. The consortium included McLaren, Rolls-Royce, the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team and Toyota Racing Development.

Ford took the project-management lead on the Penlon ventilator program, repurposing its Dagenham Engine Plant, south of London, into a subassembly production site for ventilator parts.

McLaren handled the supply chain, deploying engineering, project management, purchasing, logistics and manufacturing teams. More than 15 million parts were acquired from 88 suppliers globally in four weeks.

McLaren's Woking factory outside London went from assembling luxe supercars to building utilitarian trolleys to cart around ventilator equipment.

The auto industry is skilled at mass-producing complex products that involve millions of parts, and doing it with consistent quality, Elsy said. "If you looked at our daily program meetings, you'd think they were a car program," he said. "Even though we dramatically compressed the time frame, the change management processes, the production monitoring processes were all really familiar car-territory stuff."

Meanwhile, the group's F1 racing partners brought "real pace" to the program.

"If you've got a problem with the car five minutes to go before the race, you don't have a committee meeting about it," Elsy said. "You get on and find solutions."

That culture of urgency and rapid problem-solving was crucial to mass-producing ventilators with consistent quality in a short window of time.

Elsy described the past few months as akin to being on a roller coaster ride. "The intensity, the pace, the pressure … was life-changing," he said.