INTERVIEW
Several major French industrial groups, PSA, Air Liquide, Valeo and Schneider Electric have embarked in recent days on the race to manufacture respirators for hospitals, in the midst of a health crisis due to the Covid-19. "We are carrying out the mechanical part here in Poissy. We are in working order and we have already prepared our workshop organization and our staff to try to make 400 per day", explains Franck Guérin, manager of respirator manufacturing workshop of the PSA automotive group in Poissy in the Yvelines, Wednesday on Europe 1.
"The walk is very large"
"Today [Wednesday], we are going to manufacture 98. These respirators will then leave for Air Liquide to be checked", explains Franck Guérin. "Air Liquide manufactured around 3,500 respirators a year. There we will make 10,000 respirators in 50 days, the march is very great." In his speech Monday, the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron had made the promise of "10,000 additional respirators [products] on our soil".
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For the 95 employees in the workshop, the challenge is great. The assembly of a respirator requires no less than 130 pieces. "These are pieces that we are not used to handling at all," confirms the manager. "We don't take car parts. We just have the employees who make [normal] cars," he adds.
"It's fine watchmaking"
"In a respirator, the parts are very small. We have parts that we take and handle with tweezers", also describes Franck Guérin. "It's fine watchmaking, we pay attention to what we do. We are there a bit like the car, for customers."
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To work best on respirators, PSA has divided its workshop into three parts. "The first prepares a set of pieces with collage and meticulous operations," reports Franck Guérin. These parts are then sent to eight production lines to "allow the complete body of the device to be assembled". It is a "very meticulous part with small parts" in aluminum and brass in particular, says the repsonsable.
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A final stage of control
In the last part of the workshop: "We put the device under pressure at two bars, with medical air, to check if there are no leaks," he continues. You must then "calibrate the device and check that it outputs the correct values after using the different adjustment buttons". Buttons that will be used by the medical profession.