The response from the global manufacturing community to the need for more ventilators to treat acute sufferers of COVID-19 has been sensational. But it is one thing to rise to a challenge - quite another to deliver it. Nick Peters speaks to Tim Minshall of the Institute for Manufacturing at Cambridge University about the heartening response from industry, and some of the challenges the initiative - being coordinated by the business department BEIS - faces.
Tim Minshall says there is a fine balance to be struck between the enthusiasm of manufacturers in responding to the government’s call, and the very stringent standards that need to be met by any product entering the healthcare system.
He then looks ahead, to a future when the virus has been tamed, and at how this experience will alter our attitudes to collaboration, and how supply chains will never be the same again.
