Ohio plastics firms mobilize to 'support those risking their lives'
Challenges aside, the effort is ramping up.
Karp said at its peak, it wants to have capacity at various companies around the state to make 45,000 face shields a day.
He expects to reach that around April 23, with several different groups of companies manufacturing independently of one another.
"We went from an idea to a prototype to building a new local supply chain to production in less than two weeks," Karp said. "This should have been impossible, but we got it done."
When the need became apparent, Karp said his group, Magnet, worked with Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Eaton to make a prototype, with design ideas from doctors and hospitals.
Then they started soliciting the state's manufacturing community for ways to turn it into mass production reality.
That outreach was done as part of the Ohio Manufacturing Alliance to Fight COVID-19, which DeWine formed April 1 with business and hospital groups.
DeWine sees it as a way to make much-needed equipment for health care workers, while strengthening Ohio's manufacturing base. More than 1,500 companies have volunteered.
The alliance includes the Ohio Manufacturers' Association, the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio Manufacturing Extension Partnership, state agencies and hundreds of companies. It's working on a variety of projects, including making cloth face masks and hand sanitizer.
The face shield work, though, is among its most complex so far, with multiple plastics processors, material suppliers and others, Karp said: "It was really an incredible effort on the supply side, the plastic side.
"We've had to use multiple plastic suppliers and these plastic suppliers have had to use multiple sorts of plastics," he said. "Having to put it all together to make it go so quickly has increased the complexity amazingly, and yet we're still making it happen."
As they worked, engineers ran into attempts at price gouging on the plastic, Karp said. The face shield component makes up about half the total cost of the project, he said.
"Frankly, the prices were fluctuating like crazy on that plastic face shield," Karp said. "I know some of the folks we talked to, they're just being gouged on the price … like five times what somebody else was quoting, which I'm sure was already high because of the demand for the plastics," he said.
But companies involved are doing the work at cost, according to Hlavin from Thogus.
"We're covering costs to keep our family, meaning our employees employed, to try to keep this economy going," Hlavin said. "No one's making money doing this. It's really about what's our social responsibility to help support these front-line workers that are risking their lives every day."
Thogus is molding some components and assembling the complete product and delivering that to Eaton, he said.
Other companies involved include Classic Laminations Inc., Die-Cut Products Co., Evenflo Co. Inc., GSH Industries Inc., HP Manufacturing Co. Inc., ITEN Industries Inc., Kent Displays Inc., MTD Products Co., Ottawa Rubber Co., Pragmatic Manufacturing LLC, Premier Seals Manufacturing LLC, Professional Plastics Inc., Talent Tool and Die Inc., and Trifecta Tool and Engineering LLC.
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