Companies throughout the nonwovens industry worked overtime to help save lives during the past 12 months
By the fall of 2020, needs in the U.S. for personal protection equipment (PPE) had reached critical status. Web Industries responded to the national manufacturing crisis by repurposing composite material cutting lines at three plants to produce disposable protective isolation gowns by the millions in a matter of months.
The company reconfigured cutting equipment at its Atlanta, GA, Denton, TX and Middlesex, VT, facilities that had been used to format materials for aerospace applications. The conversion involved recalibrating the lines to accommodate the nonwoven surgical gown material and was completed in a matter of days.
According to market development and strategy manager, Ralph Tricomi, staffing to meet the sudden influx of huge orders for nonwoven protective isolation gowns was among Web Industries’ biggest challenges.
“Our human resources department at each plant undertook an intensive recruiting effort to attract and hire skilled operations personnel,” Tricomi says. “Overall, there was a unified, interdisciplinary effort among three plants to produce gowns necessary to help protect lives and get America back to work.”
Read the full article here: Nonwovens Step Up