Edwardsburg manufacturer stops making RV parts, starts making face shields for hospitals
Our local community is great every day. We are hearing more and more stories about people helping each other during this pandemic.
An Edwardsburg RV supply company is using its resources to help local hospitals.
it’s amazing how fast they developed a plan to make face shields for local doctors and nurses.
In just a week they came up with the prototype, and already dropped off their first shipment of shields at Memorial Hospital.
They’re hoping this is the first of many shipments to local hospitals in the future.
Mike Ganger, Duo Form VP of finance, said the company has stepped out our their comfort zone and stepped up to help people that need it the most.
Face shields out of materials normally used for RV skylights.
“Got it in front of one of those doctors from Memorial. They loved it, thought it would work,” said Ganger.
Projects usually take their Duo Form’s design team between 4-to-6 weeks to develop. Because of the severity of the situation, the team made the design within 24 hours.
Shelly Ditmer, the VP of sales, dropped the first hundred face shields off at Memorial Hospital.
“They have a need for another 2,400 after that, so we’re just doing what we can to get them quicker and we’re also getting calls from our other local hospitals,” said Ditmer.
Duo Form laid-off the majority of their 180 workers until the end of the pandemic, so there’s only been a team of about 9 or 10 people working on these masks at a time.
“We probably only have 4 guys on the floor producing them and us in the office right now,” said Ditmer. “We’re you’re assembly crew. We’re assembling right here in our conference room.”
They want to reach more area hospitals and hopefully bring back more of their workers to help.
Even though it’s been difficult for them, Ganger says they want to do anything to help the people on the front lines of the pandemic.
“These people are the ones that are being affected the most and we’ll do anything we can to help those folks out,” said Ganger.
They’re trying to help out area hospitals first, but they’re hoping that eventually there’s potential for them to produce face shields for workers in the food industry.