PTC will be one of the partners in the Ventilator Challenge UK consortium led by High Value Manufacturing Catapult CEO Dick Elsy and a host of the UK’s leading engineering businesses, including Ford Motor Company, McLaren, Airbus, GKN Aerospace, Meggitt and Siemens UK.
Experts will be working with existing ventilator manufacturers Smiths Group and Penlon to capture crucial assembly processes involved in the development and build of Rapidly Manufactured Ventilator Systems (RMVS).
Augmented Reality at the service of Covid-19 emergency
The consortium will be using PTC’s Vuforia Expert Capture AR technology and Microsoft’s HoloLens to create the virtual guide and then transfer it, via Microsoft Azure, to the factories of consortium partners through wearable equipment to help increase capacity and ramp up production.
Paul Haimes, Vice President of Business Development and Field Engineering at PTC, commented: “This is an unprecedented response from UK manufacturing for an unprecedented crisis and a great example of British engineering and technology coming together. For every new ventilator we produce, another life is potentially saved.”
Establishing volume manufacturing as soon as possible
A 15-strong team of PTC specialists have been focused on this project and will be continuing to work with partners to establish volume manufacture as soon as possible. To avoid transmission of Covid-19, only one expert is working on site with the rest of the support being delivered remotely and through cloud technology.
