100 Stories2020 ZOLL and the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented challenges worldwide. In response, ZOLL, an Asahi Kasei company, increased production of ventilators as clinical sites around the world faced a serious shortage of ventilators with the spread of infection.

In 2014, ZOLL signed an agreement to acquire Impact Instrumentation, Inc., a U.S. manufacturer of respiratory care products.

Impact Instrumentation had been designing and manufacturing portable and automatic emergency ventilators, portable and onboard aspirators for over 35 years and those products have been used aboard ships, aircraft, and other military medical and transport services.

The acquisition of Impact Instrumentation, a leading supplier of transport ventilators, complemented ZOLL’s portfolio of critical care products centered on cardiac functions with a line of respiratory products.

In 2020 when novel coronavirus infections began spreading widely in China and Europe, ZOLL decided to increase the production of ventilators with unprecedented speed. Approximately 5% of patients infected with COVID-19 need ventilators as they had severe damage to their lungs.

To meet the increased demand, ZOLL acted quickly to modify existing assembly lines, etc., raising production capacity by 25-fold.

As a result, ZOLL shipped more than 30,000 ventilators between January and November 2020. While most went to the U.S. government, many devices were sent around the world to 23 different countries. There were obstacles to increasing production.

One was procurement of parts. Ventilators are complex, integrated medical devices comprising hundreds of individually tested parts. It was extremely difficult to procure parts during the pandemic, but ZOLL leveraged its strong relationships with suppliers, even convincing suppliers to ship parts and equipment quickly, and with priority.

Another obstacle was prevention of infection among employees. Masks, barriers, and other protective gear were brought into the production site. One employee even moved out of his home to avoid infecting a family member, and commuted to work from another place.

ZOLL ventilators are equipped with a high-performance internal filtration system, which provides high usability in the most challenging environments, and are easy for healthcare providers to use. ZOLL continues to supply ventilators to medical institutions that need them.