From the Production Line: Tim Rance

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and the Penlon ESO 2 was accepted as a solution to the UK Government’s requirement for thousands of ventilators, it was clear that the challenge was primarily one of ramping up from 500 AV-S ventilators a year to over 500 every two days! By early April, when the design had been signed off by the MHRA for production, Penlon had completed a pilot batch and then transitioned rapidly to decentralised manufacture with the members of the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium. Major sub-assemblies being manufactured at Ford and Airbus, with final assembly at STI and test and release at Penlon and GKN’s Abingdon sites. The Penlon factory in Abingdon had to be completely reconfigured into one great test site. The organisational and equipment challenges were huge, going from one five days a week dayshift to 24-hour activity, seven days a week. The training requirements put intense pressure on the core of expertise at Penlon. It was clear that there would be no sleep until July! I feel very proud to be working on this project and it has been great working with such a fantastic team with a common goal. I have had very little time to ride my Harley Davidson, and my budding singing career has been put on hold …but I will keep threatening to bring my guitar in for when we have the Saturday office treat – fish and chips!