The production comes at a time hospitals nationwide are facing shortages of medical equipment like ventilators, masks and gloves, with some running on only a few days’ worth of supplies at a time.
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To address that need, Novolex’ team of engineers, designers and programmers retrofitted machines and supply chain logistics at nine North American facilities to produce and deliver face shields and isolation gowns “at an unprecedented scale.” That includes the West Chester site, which typically is dedicated to producing can liners.
"It was quite a feat for our maintenance and operators to, first of all work with Galen's team and our engineering staff at Novolex to figure out how do we take the machines and work to produce a gown and true operations where we're actually being able to reproduce that," said Doug Sheffield. vice president of operations for the Heritage Bag business unit of Novolex. "It was interesting for us, it was a learning experience, but we were able to make it work."
Customizing machine production at this scale typically takes upwards of six to eight months for engineers, but Novolex’s team made it happen in less than three weeks.
What made the project “a unique and interesting challenge,” Killam said, was the remote nature of much of its creation.
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“We had, of course, people in the plant, but they were also people throughout the Novolex organization who were helping do this and they were staying at home,” he said. “It was not your typical project. We had to work at different times in (this) different era.
The company is working with the Department of Defense, FEMA, hospital associations, purchasing groups for hospitals, retirement communities and dental groups, with gowns reaching “all four corners of the country,” from Washington state to Florida and from San Diego, California to states in the northeast, like New York and New Jersey, Killam said.
“We’re sending them everywhere especially as we continue to scale our way into this at even a much larger scale,” he said. “We’re making about a million gowns a week right now.”
The company plans to add 10 positions at its West Chester site, about 12 percent of its workforce there, Sheffield said.
The gown-making part of the business has helped the company ward off possible staff reductions during a time when pan liner business dropped as the food service and hospitality industries suffered the financial woes of the pandemic’s lockdown phase, Sheffield said.
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Township spokeswoman Barb Wilson said West Chester is home to “a diverse collection of innovative corporate stakeholders that every day make a difference in the world.”
“Most people may never come in contact with this company — Novolex — or what they produce, but they are committed to making a difference,” Wilson said. “West Chester would want them to know that they are very much appreciated.”
Novolex has 10,000 employees across 61 locations worldwide.
Two Novolex locations in the region include Heritage Bag Company in West Chester Twp. and its Burrows packaging division in Franklin. Novolex acquired Heritage in May 2016
Novolex expects to continue converting facilities for the duration of this pandemic, enabling the company to ship more than 6 million gowns and 2 million face shields per month and 6 million medical isolation gowns per month to epicenters of the virus’s outbreak once additional lines are converted to PPE production.
It will continue to produce gowns for as long as there is a need.
The visors for Novolex’s face shields are cut from the same PET plastic sheets used to make clear cake containers, while the head gear is crafted from machines producing plastic plates and cutlery typically used for picnics, weddings and other events.
To produce isolation gowns, Novolex pieced together machinery for three different production machines, all of which normally make tortilla, birdseed and ice melt bags. The gowns come in two versions: long sleeve and no sleeve.
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