Reconfiguring and ramping-up ventilator production in the face of COVID-19: Can robots help?

Ali Ahmad Malik; Tariq Masood; Rehana Kousar

doi:10.1016/j.jmsy.2020.09.008

Reconfiguring and ramping-up ventilator production in the face of COVID-19: Can robots help?

J Manuf Syst. 2021 Jul:60:864-875. doi: 10.1016/j.jmsy.2020.09.008. Epub 2020 Oct 14.

Authors

Ali Ahmad Malik¹, Tariq Masood^{2

3

4}, Rehana Kousar^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Brande, Denmark.
² Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK.
³ Engineering Design Centre, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, UK.
⁴ Cambridge Global Challenges Strategic Research Initiative, University of Cambridge, JJ Thompson Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK.
⁵ Biomakespace, Cambridge University Biomedical Innovation Hub, Clifford Allbutt Building, Biomedical Campus, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 0AH, UK.

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic expands, the shortening of medical equipment is swelling. A key piece of equipment getting far-out attention has been ventilators. The difference between supply and demand is substantial to be handled with normal production techniques, especially under social distancing measures in place. The study explores the rationale of human-robot teams to ramp up production using advantages of both the ease of integration and maintaining social distancing. The paper presents a model for faster integration of collaborative robots and design guidelines for workstations. The scenario is evaluated for an open source ventilator through continuous human-robot simulation and amplification of results in a discrete event simulation.

Keywords: COVID-19; Cobot; Collaborative robot; Guidelines; Pandemic; Production; Ramp-up; Reconfigure; Robot; Simulation; Social distancing; Ventilator; Workstation design.