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Bloomberg Businessweek March 30, 2020Roman said 3M would work with Ford Motor Co. to produce
powered air purifying respirators, waist-mounted devices that
blow air into helmets that shield wearers. Honeywell is also
increasing N95 production, saying it will hire at least 500 peo-
ple to expand capacity at a facility in Rhode Island.
Although businesses globally have emptied out, more than
half of 3M’s 96,000 employees are still showing up for work in
its factories and warehouses. “It’s been amazing,” says Rehder,
who’s in the Aberdeen plant seven days a week, usually walk-
ing the floor, which is now marked with yellow tape to keep
workers from violating the imaginary 6-foot infection barrier.
“People are very proud to work in a place that’s making respi-
rators, especially with the need that’s out there now.”Pliny the Elder wrote of sulfur miners in ancient Rome
using animal bladders to fashion the earliest face masks.
Leonardo da Vinci imagined a mask soldiers could wear as
they flung poisoned powder at enemies. Over the centuries
masks evolved to counter smoke, smog, coal dust, and asbestos
fibers. During the 1918 flu pandemic, San Francisco health reg-
ulators recommended that people wear masks in public places.
The N95 respirator is so named because, worn properly, it
blocks at least 95% of airborne particles from entering a wear-
er’s mouth and nose, while still allowing respiration through
the microscopically porous shell. This design protects a person
from medical and other hazards; flimsier, looser-fitting surgi-
cal masks are intended to prevent the wearer from infecting
others with expelled mucus, blood, or spit.
3M makes about two dozen versions of the N95, for different
industrial and medical purposes. Generally they’re constructed
from nonwoven materials—infinitesimal plastic strands blown
together to form a random thicket that, under a microscope,
“is going to look like pickup sticks,” says Nikki McCullough,
3M’s global leader for occupational health and safety. “If you’re
a submicron particle, it’s quite the journey through there.”
The filters can block invaders as small as 0.3 microns, or about
1/100th the thickness of a human hair. The virus is smaller than
that, at about 0.125 microns, but it often travels within larger
particles when an infected person coughs or sneezes.
3M started making dust respirators in 1972. Later versions
became staples at construction sites, oil fields, coal mines, and
factories, as well as at hospitals and disaster scenes. After the
SARSoutbreaksentdemandsoaring,Romansays,“Werealizedwe didn’t have the ability to flex” production to adapt to the
unexpected. “We had H1N1 after that, we’ve had forest fires
and hurricanes, and all of those create a surge in demand.” So
3M set about rethinking the manufacturing process from one
end of the supply chain to the other. Factories added assembly
lines that would stand dormant until needed. Suppliers were
put on alert. The company assembled emergency response
teams that would leap into action whenever catastrophe beck-
oned: Harvey, Maria, the California wildfires.
Then came Covid-19. China’s respirator makers had largely
shut down for Chinese New Year when the coronavirus started
making headlines, leaving mask supply shrinking just as the
need was poised to skyrocket.
The supply chain team at 3M noticed early. “We monitor our
demand constantly,” says Charles Avery, global value stream
director for 3M’s personal safety division. “We knew we could
be in for an X factor.” McCullough, who has worked on respira-
tory protection for much of her 23 years at 3M, began to worry
when she saw Singapore and other countries taking precau-
tionary steps even before they had many cases. “We started
realizing how quickly this was spreading,” she says.
3M had another built-in advantage: Unlike many companies
that have moved production to low-cost countries, it sources
the materials for its respirators near its assembly plants and
serves customers reasonably close by. “We make respirators in
China for the China market, we make respirators in Korea for a
little more than the Korea market,” Roman says. Each plant can
ship respirators anywhere—pretty important in a pandemic—
but day to day, a plant doesn’t rely on distant vendors subject
to tariffs or export bans.
In the U.S., the facility at Aberdeen, a city of 28,000, was
built in 1974. The 450,000-square-foot factory and a sister plant
in Omaha together produce 400 million respirators of myriad
types annually. Within the next year, they will be producing
many more.
When Rehder got that call from his bosses in January, he
says, “basically, we were at that point where we needed to start
every machine up. It happened pretty much instantaneously.
That’s what this plant does.” The facility quickly organized
offsite and online job fairs. Hires had to undergo training and
pass a medical exam before starting work. The payroll now
counts more than 700.
RehderhasalsobeenbringinginnewequipmenttobuildKnow Your Masks
○ PAPRHospitals are
clamoring for
the powered
air-purifying
respirator, the
next level of
protection.○ N95The standard for
health-care
workers. Creates
a barrier to a
minimum of
95% of airborne
particles.○ SurgicalMost useful for
protecting
others from
the wearer, not
the other way
around.