How Ford got its coronavirus assembly line humming

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! GlaxoSmithKline teams up with Sanofi on a coronavirus vaccine effort, small business owners turn to Bumble for financial relief, and we get a peek at one company manufacturing coronavirus supplies. Have a nice Wednesday.

– Women behind the scenes. There’s a whole host of corporations pitching in to make equipment to combat the coronavirus pandemic. In the latest issue of Fortune, writer Maria Aspan gives us a peek at one of those efforts: Ford’s shift from manufacturing automobiles to producing medical supplies.

Marcy Fisher, who normally oversees Ford’s global body exterior and interior engineering, is helping lead the project. One of the biggest puzzles she faced came in the form of a small elastic band that secures a plastic face shield to a medical worker’s head. When Ford set out to build the protective face coverings, it ran into an industry shortage.

Fisher’s solution, as Maria puts it, “was gloriously banal.” Fisher and her team repurposed the flexible rubber tubing or weather strips that normally seal car doors and windows to do the elastic’s job.

Within hours, they’d sent samples to a nearby emergency room for doctors to test. “It’s completely innovative, and it totally works,” said Erin Brennan, an emergency physician at a Detroit hospital, who tested the face shields.

As of this month, Ford is manufacturing 1 million face shields per week.

Now Fisher’s team is tackling a battery-powered, air-purifying respirator, which represents an area of “unmet need” in which Ford has “a lot of engineering depth,” Fisher says.

We know so many women are on the front lines of this crisis; it’s heartening learn about so many others who are fighting this war behind the scenes.

You can read Maria’s full story here.

Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman

Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

- Pharma joins forces. GlaxoSmithKline, led by CEO Emma Walmsley, teamed up with Sanofi to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Sanofi will provide the experimental vaccine, while Glaxo will contribute its adjuvant technology, which may allow more doses of the shot to be produced. Fortune

- Social responsibility. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg tells Forbes that she "takes [her] responsibility really, really seriously." That responsibility? Getting accurate information about COVID-19 to 2.26 billion people every day. Forbes

- Historic election. South Korea held the first national election of the global coronavirus era today. The country's newly-formed Women's Party put forward four candidates and needs 3% of the vote to secure a seat. It's the first time a feminist party has sought parliamentary seats in South Korea. Guardian

- IMF report. The IMF, led by Kristalina Georgieva, is predicting the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In a speech last week, Georgieva emphasized that "these are the times for which the IMF was created." Fortune

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Nanci Caldwell, former CMO of PeopleSoft, and Elisa Steele, former CEO of Namely, join Procore Technologies' board of directors.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

- Banking on Bumble. As small-business owners struggle to navigate the Paycheck Protection Program, some are turning to grants offered by female-founded companies. Whitney Wolfe Herd's Bumble is giving a total of $1 million in grants to women-led businesses, while Spanx founder Sara Blakely's foundation will distribute $5,000 grants to female business owners. Bloomberg

- Slowed adoption. The coronavirus pandemic has halted fertility treatments—but it's also put many international adoptions in limbo. One North Carolina couple adopting two daughters from Chad can't return home because their daughters are not yet U.S. citizens. NPR

- Work divorce. During remote work—or intense, mid-crisis, in-person work—what happens to the work 'wives'? Employees are finding that something is missing from their professional lives without their work 'spouse' to relieve the daily grind. MEL Magazine