Engineering giant Rolls-Royce has revealed how its workforce has stepped up to make thousands of face visors for frontline coronavirus workers.
The firm, which has its civil aerospace and defence divisions in Derby, said it has so far manufactured more than 18,000 face visors at its sites across the world.
Out of this number, 15,000 have been delivered across the 海角视频, with more than 7,000 coming from its Derby sites.
As a business, Rolls-Royce has been hit hard by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly on the aviation industry.
As a result, the business recently announced plans to shed 9,000 jobs – and it is feared that many of those will take place in Derby.
Despite the downturn, some of the workers have been busy, designing and producing the face visors using 3D printing.
It began with a worker in Germany who started making the visors using 3D printing – and quickly developed into a virtual global production line, with teams working around the clock to produce as many visors as possible.
Jonathan Watson, chief manufacturing engineer (Civil Future Programmes) at Rolls-Royce’s civil aerospace site in Derby, said: “We heard about a colleague at Rolls-Royce in Germany who was using a 3D printer to manufacture face shields for healthcare workers.
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“Word got around to manufacturing teams in Derby, both at our civil aerospace site, as well as our team based at Raynesway.
“We have many non-metallic 3D printers across our facilities, which we ordinarily use for anything from manufacturing parts and tooling to training apprentices.
“We knew we could replicate the design and start to manufacture the shields too.
“Once we started speaking to colleagues, we realised that many of us had the same idea and the capabilities to make it happen.”
“Once we started coordinating activity, people got in touch to say they had access to a 3D printer at home or in one of our facilities and wanted to start making shields.
“People’s partners and friends have got involved too – some are printing shields at home around the clock.”
The team have set up remote production lines around the world to make sure the shields use consistent designs and materials.
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They have also helped to coordinate requests and direct the shields to where they are needed.
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Thousands of shields have been delivered to the Royal Derby Hospital, as well as many care homes in the area.
As well as Derby, teams have been set up in Barnoldswick and Hucknall, as well as Erlangen, Dahlewitz, Munich, Spain and the US. There are also hundreds of employees producing shields at home.
Jonathan said: “We’re speaking to teams around the world. We’ve drawn on the ingenuity of our people, as well as our experience in managing supply chains and setting up production lines.”