As the White House’s policy coordinator for the Defense Production Act, Peter Navarro likens Ford’s assembly of the Airon Model A-E to tank manufacturing during World War II. Five hundred paid volunteer UAW represented employees will work around the clock over three shifts to roll out 12,000 ventilators at Ford’s Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, by the end of the May before launching the full order of 50,000 ventilators by July 4. Production began Sunday, April 12.
While creating medical devices may seem foreign, there were other times in U.S. history that Ford shifted its focus away from automotive to medical. Time magazine reported that Henry Ford challenged a team of engineers in early 1941 to draft an affordable, portable incubator that would combat the premature infant mortality death rate. The end result was a mobile incubator, humidified and oxygenated that also provided warmth for as little as $75.
Seven years later, Ford’s plant in River Rouge, Michigan, ramped up again to create a cylindrical metal breathing chamber called the “iron lung.” Similar to modern-day ventilators, the air pressure inside the airtight chamber provided assisted breathing that children stricken with polio so desperately needed.
The Airon Model A-E marks the second ventilator Ford will construct and joins the automaker’s rich history of medical innovations. To learn more about Ford’s efforts to battle COVID-19, visit https://corporate.ford.com/coronavirus.html
