Many will be familiar with Dick Elsy from his role as Chief Executive of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult.
However, for the past couple of months, Dick has been leading VentilatorChallengeUK, a consortium made up of industrial, technology and engineering businesses from across the aerospace, automotive and medical sectors.
Companies in the consortium have now received formal orders from the government for thousands of units for the UK need, based on two agreed designs and on existing technologies.
Editor of TheManufacturer.com, Jonny Williamson, spoke with Dick about what methods enabled consortium members to rapidly spin up and create new production lines and supply chains, something that prior to this crisis would have been considered impossible.
He also comments on what the future may hold for industry, including the adoption of new technologies, the crossover of learnings from mass producing ventilators to mass producing vaccines, and maximising support from government.