[ MUSIC PLAYING ]
I've never done things by the books but
this was unusual even for me.
I'd been hired by a podcast. Some group of pencil
pushers who called themselves Planet Money.
These guys heard people were gonna
need more ventilators but that the
answer to making new ones — maybe hundreds
of thousands of them — was in the middle
of a tangled web. But I think I've
finally wriggled free and figured it out.
[ MUSIC PLAYING ]
You see it all started with this one guy.
Chris Kiple he said his name was.
And Chris, well he was stuck between a rock and hard place.
Chris runs this little company in
Seattle called Ventec.
They make ventilator systems. And he'd been getting
call, after call, after call.
He had the governor's office of Washington
breathing down his neck.
"The US needs ventilators and they needed them
yesterday. What's it gonna take to make 'em?"
Chris says, "It's really complicated.
But I swear we're on it."
You see, to put one of these things
together, Chris and his people gotta
have 700 parts. And those 700 parts got
to come from suppliers who are spread
out all over the world. Then those parts
got to get to Washington to be put together.
Meanwhile, 1,400 miles away in
Minneapolis, Todd Olson has a problem of his own.
Todd is the CEO of Twin City Die Castings and
they make a lot of things but mostly
they make car parts. And car production
had just come to a screeching halt, so he
was sweating.
But Todd was about to catch a break.
The president of Twin City busts
in and says, "Todd, we've got a ventilator
company on the horn who wants to work
with us."
So Todd picks it up.
"Todd it's Chris over at Ventec. We're in a bind over here
but we think you can
help.
"Hit me," Todd says.
You see Chris understands that Todd makes pistons. And pistons are one of those 700 parts
Ventec uses in their machines. So Chris
says, "We'd like to order a 150 pistons a month
and they gotta be small and I mean small. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
So Todd says, "OK. I bet we can do that. 150 a month you said?"
and they start making plans. But you see,  that doesn't solve the problem.
Sure Todd can make the
pistons but Chris and the good people
over at Ventec, they can only crank out
about 200 ventilators a month.
And that wasn't gonna cut it no way no how. They
were trying to make a lot more.
That's when a big player came onto the scene.
General Motors baby. The big GM.
GM gets connected with Ventec and they say,
"We heard you're making a few ventilators
and we want to help." And boy could they help.
Ventec tells GM, "On a good day — on
our best day really — with the factory
maxed out, everyone working 24/7 we can
only make about a thousand of these a week."
And GM says, "Not only can we get you
to a thousand a week, we're gonna help
you make way more than that. We're a car
company sure. But what we really are is a
gigantic global supply chain." And on a
Saturday morning GM wakes up their own
team and they all hit the phones hard.
GM gets Todd over a Twin City back on the line and says,
"150 pistons is fine but how about 20,000 a month?"
Todd says, "Well, let me talk to my
guy and see what we can do."
So Todd calls his most-trusted mold maker in Michigan.
Together, they and every single engineer
between the two companies worked round
the clock. They crammed months worth of
man-hours into a single weekend. Made the
mold. Todd took that mold and started
making the pistons.
The pistons were just one part. But
Ventec and GM, together they found
hundreds of Todd Olsons out there.
They sourced enough of each and every one of
those 700 parts to make tens of
thousands of ventilators a month.
By June 1, more than 6,000 ventilators will be available.
30,000 by the end of August.
By their bootstraps blood sweat
and tears these people made it happen.
You see I like it when all the pieces of the puzzle fit.
And this was one of those times.
[ MUSIC PLAYING ]
