Cross-industry partnerships with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and Honeywell, have been essential to the rapid increase in manufacture of Hillrom’s Life2000 non-invasive ventilator, as well as the company’s Progressa® ICU bed and Centrella Smart+ hospital bed.
“We, along with the caregivers and patients we serve, have been the beneficiaries of an extraordinary spirit of cooperation,” said John Groetelaars, Hillrom’s president and CEO. “From engineering and logistics expertise to securing the supply of critical and hard-to-find components, our partners at FCA and Honeywell have delivered beyond our expectations, and we are very grateful to them.”
FCA engineers, manufacturing experts, purchasing program managers and supply-chain specialists assisted Hillrom with the planned five-fold increase in production of the company’s Life2000 non-invasive ventilator in Irvine, California. In Batesville, Indiana, where Hillrom manufactures ICU and med-surg hospital beds, FCA’s expertise in metrology and metal stamping, combined with Honeywell’s ability to locate 90% of the electrical components necessary, were indispensable to Hillrom’s higher-volume bed production.
“Although my FCA colleagues and I don’t have backgrounds in the healthcare business, our partnership with Hillrom was a great opportunity to respond to the global pandemic in a meaningful way,” said Marc Issner, a senior engineer on FCA’s RAM 1500 pickup truck program. “Working alongside Hillrom, we were able to apply our expertise in product design and manufacturing processes to help increase production of urgently needed medical devices.”
“We’re proud of our employees’ ingenuity, technical expertise and spirit of collaboration with Hillrom,” said Jon Hobgood, vice president, Integrated Supply Chain Engineering, Honeywell Aerospace. “Honeywell continues to build on our strong legacy of supporting the medical device industry and collaborate with technology innovators to support the response to the global pandemic.”
