I worked for a ventilator startup for a few years, and it took us about 18 months to get our line to the point where we could make first articles built to manufacturing instead of prototype processes. These first articles then continued to develop some performance problems which needed to be rectified over the following year or so. This was starting from an empty building, which is where you'd be even if you retrofitted a ventilator factory into a car factory, because none of the tools in a car factory are precise or accurate enough to build or test a ventilator.

Yes but if you start with complete specs for a well-established production model, as well as complete specs for all the tooling and assembly machines you've got a completely different scenario. If you take experienced machinists off another line to spin it up with consulting from people who are currently building it, I would guess you could do something in six months or so. I mean, IBM built M1 Garands in WWII.

Yes that's be doing done now

"More than 60 manufacturers have been sent a blueprint for making up to 20,000 ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, “at speed”, as Boris Johnson called on British industry to help the government prepare for a surge in cases."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/16/vauxhall-ow...

I work for a very large global manufacturer w/ a presence in China, and does not produce medical equipment. My Chinese family told me (so take it w/ a grain of salt) they said 'Hey I heard your company is building ventilators to help out' and I said I don't know.

My gripe is why the other countries didn't do it too since we had more lead time. Infection rates are exponential...waiting too long to take action will cause more deaths.

A gun is very different from a medical device. The tolerances your automobile machinists are used to working at are much wider. Ventilators have to measure fractions of a cmH20 above ambient pressure, and they have to do so accurately to deliver gas, especially smaller boluses. I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that training someone who is used to the tools used to building automobile engines will be practically unskilled at building ventilators, and you need to validate your people as well as your production processes, irrespective of whether you have blueprints for equipment. You have to validate everything or you will kill people with these new ventilators.

This makes total sense. I appreciate an answer from from someone who knows what they're talking about!