ramping up production of something

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As the US switched to full out war production after 12/7/41. Liberty ships and tankers were mass produced. sub assemblies were parceled out and the pieces were assembled on coastal ways. Kaiser yd put one together in 4 1/2 days. You need something fast, come up with a modular design and sub out each module. This will get supply a complex piece of equipment faster than several suppliers building the entire thing and competing for material from the same suppliers. Use a proven design and piece it out. C'mon this isn't rocket surgery you guys
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We now have China doing the work.It is cheaper and you can dump the toxins in the river.
 
It still takes time. Back when ITT was around, we'd always say it takes time. Remember Hitler took power in 1933. The US was starting to wake up to the fact that things weren't looking so good so many things were started years before the invasion of Poland. Ships and new plane designs were started before the invasion. The B-29 that dropped the bomb in 1945 was started in 1938 and the first one didn't fly til 1942.

And for the record, there's no rocket surgery. But it's not quantum mechanics which Richard Feynman who won the Nobel prize for it said "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics".
 
When I was working over at Raytheon I saw some papers from that time.
2 shifts of 12 hrs/day, 7 days/wk.
That wouldn't have included commute time, in a bus or a pre-war car (with that reliability).
Not sure today's workers are into that work-life balance/experience.
 
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Patent waivers and multiple manufacturers ordered to cooperate and work together are necessary for this to happen as quickly as necessary. As mentioned, complex pieces of machinery require specialized equipment and design - that won't happen overnight without everyone in the supply chain working together and the newbies filling in where the backlog is.
 
The particular piece of equipment is a ventilator and they've been around for a century. Take a state of the art unit under production. Instead of Acme Pumps building the whole unit soup to nuts and competing with Apex Pumps for parts and mkt share. Get Apex to build only a sub assembly and so on..
 
Originally Posted by andyd
The particular piece of equipment is a ventilator and they've been around for a century. Take a state of the art unit under production. Instead of Acme Pumps building the whole unit soup to nuts and competing with Apex Pumps for parts and mkt share. Get Apex to build only a sub assembly and so on..


They're going to build a 2020 ventilator, not a 1950's mechanical piece of junk that could potentially make things worse for a patient.
 
While I've never worked any real production manufacturing, I did work for a small firm designing parts for Ford. It was absolutely fascinating, and things happened faster than expected. Once we settled on a camshaft design, 3 Ford engineers were there the next day to get the specs and measure the parts themselves. (just in case we made a mistake) . They wanted the parts that worked, in the exact configuration that worked, and the design went directly into the Mustang SVO.

Pistons came from Brazil, Roller Followers came from some other local NY production shop, that produced our design, and camshafts came from Florida and other locations. But within weeks we had a viable, emissions compliant setup capable of 200+hp at 14 pounds boost, that then went into mass production.

While this seems on the very low side for today's engines, remember this was a Ford Pinto engine, with 2 valves per cylinder, relatively poor port configuration, and a limited RPM capability. They make 300HP with common mods, so they can perform well.
 
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Originally Posted by spackard
When I was working over at Raytheon I saw some papers from that time.
2 shifts of 12 hrs/day, 7 days/wk.
That wouldn't have included commute time, in a bus or a pre-war car (with that reliability).
Not sure today's workers are into that work-life balance/experience.



Sounds like the ER to me
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All right, gentlemen, we know the subject at hand, and we all want to talk about it. But, fundamentally, this is about COVID-19 response, and I think we've said enough at this point.
 
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