How we’re tackling the ventilator challenge

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If you’ve heard that Rolls-Royce in making ventilators for the NHS, you might be wondering why and how we’re doing it.

We’re part of VentilatorChallengeUK, a consortium of businesses who have come together to make ventilators for the UK. Thousands of people are working on the challenge, committed to delivering additional ventilators to help treat patients. We have 300 people working on the project at Rolls-Royce.

We’re an industrial technology company; we provide power for commercial and military planes; we power data centres and hospitals and trains. We’ve even built an all-electric plane. But what do we know about medical equipment? And how are we addressing the challenge of scaling up the UK’s supply of ventilators?

Skills in the right places

We started by understanding what we could bring to the challenge. The Government’s strategy is focused on three pillars: procuring more devices from existing manufacturers; scaling up production from existing suppliers; and working with industry to design and manufacture new devices.

Warrick Matthews, Chief Procurement Officer – Civil Aerospace was one of the first people to get involved with the challenge. “When I first heard about our role in the consortium, I wondered how on earth we were going to do this. I work in Civil Aerospace with an aero supply chain and this is a medical grade ventilator. But we have people who are skilled in creating complex supply chains, sourcing thousands of parts for our products from around the world to tight production deadlines, so we knew we could help to scale-up production of existing ventilator supplies.”

“The team is so motivated to succeed it is incredible, it’s not just another project - they are doing it for a higher purpose; there are many personal reasons and stories,” he adds.

Building the team

From there, we identified the people we needed to start work. Richard Gage, Senior Global Commodity Manager says, "We put the call out asking for people to come forward at 9:00am. By midday we had 15 volunteers, and that team grew to 40. There are hundreds involved now.

"These people have been working in shifts, through weekends," Richard added. "It tells me a lot about the energy, drive and spirit of our people. There were no questions about what was required or the hours needed to meet the target. We had the target, we had to deliver it. If we had a problem. we needed to solve it. The mindset of the team is incredible."

Teams split into smaller groups and got to work, contacting suppliers, agreeing quantities and timescales and arranging deliveries.

Since the start of the challenge just over three weeks ago, the team have worked at socially-distanced sites or at home. They’ve held more than 370 conference calls (some with helpers!), checked more than 800 technical drawings, reverse engineered and redesigned components, and liaised with suppliers around the world.

Building a supply chain isn’t simple. It requires huge coordination with different companies, each delivering parts as quickly as possible.

“The suppliers we’re working with have been amazing, they’ve been so dedicated. Suppliers have gone to huge lengths to deliver every single part. Everyone just wants to do whatever it takes to help,” says Tracy Graylish, a programme manager in Civil Aerospace.

Carrie, who works in our procurement team dials into a call with a young helper or two.

Delivering the ventilators our NHS needs

The parts we’re sourcing will be delivered to new production lines that will ramp up the supply of ventilators. We need a second supply chain so that existing suppliers can focus on increasing parts to the production lines that are already manufacturing the devices.

Production has already started ramping up, and ventilators have been delivered to the NHS in all four nations of the United Kingdom. Production will increase further in the coming days and weeks. The consortium has also begun production of a different, modified design of a ventilator made by Penlon, which recently received regulatory approval and is being delivered to the NHS front line.

Find out more about VentilatorChallengeUK.

Part of our response to the COVID-19 outbreak

We’re dedicated to supporting customers, communities, governments and health workers during the outbreak of COVID-19. We’ve created a shield to protect health workers from aerosolised COVID-19 as they treat patients, our employees are producing protective personal equipment using 3D printers around the world, and we’ve published STEM materials to continue to inspire the next generation of pioneers.

How we’re tackling the ventilator challenge

Skills in the right places

Building the team

Delivering the ventilators our NHS needs

Part of our response to the COVID-19 outbreak

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