How can companies completely unrelated to face masks or hand sanitizers convert their production to those so quickly?

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Like razer for exmaple.

They said they will make lots of masks for hospitals.

Razer makes PC peripherals, not even closely related to surgical masks.

How does this work? How can they convert to types or products produced so quickly?

In: Engineering

3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Peripheral manufacturers often make another important component for the hardware, the packaging.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They aren’t as unrelated as you might think. Most of the companies share raw materials of whatever they’re temporarily making. A company that makes computer stuff has all or most of the raw materials to make medical stuff. Similarly, hand sanitizers are mostly alcohol, you know what has a lot of alcohol on hand? Any company that sells booze.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Saw this online:
“CEO Min-Laing Tan said Razer’s engineers and designers have been working around the clock over the last few days to convert some of its production facilities so workers can temporarily make surgical masks ***instead of gaming peripherals.”***
From… https://news.yahoo.com/2020-03-19-razer-is-making-surgical-masks-to-help-with-supply-shortages.html.
Manufacturing companies have used the assembly-line process for decades to mass-produce their products. The process is mostly the same, regardless of the particular product.

An assembly line involves a conveyor belt that moves along a table, which is staffed with many workers . Each worker has all the training needed to perform one or more simple tasks as a product passes by. At hand for each worker are the tools and parts needed for completing the assigned task.

When changing to a different product, an engineer would be responsible for setting up the assembly line and designing the process. Workers would be selected and trained for the new tasks. Once started, the assembly line would be speeded up as the workers became familiar with their tasks and made fewer errors.

When changing products, a company might stop production for a short time to accommodate the changes to the line. The length of such a delay would vary according the similarity of the products being switched.