Innovating to serve the community

Husco-led consortium develops breakthrough face mask for frontline healthcare professionals

By Austin Ramirez, CEO of Husco International

At Husco, the pandemic reinforced many of the lessons we learned during the 2009-10 recession. The first is the need to communicate openly and transparently, with an optimism that is colored with realism. Often, there’s a tendency for leadership to pull in and huddle in a “war room,” either physically -- or virtually, these days. But at Husco we focus on overcommunicating with our team members.

The other main lesson that the COVID-19 crisis reinforced is the need to react quickly when the business environment changes. We work in a cyclical business. Our markets don’t go up or down 5 or 10 percent. They go up and down 20, 30, 40 percent – and even more in today’s environment. While we certainly don’t want to overreact, it is imperative to respond aggressively to economic conditions and quickly make sure that we get to a financially sustainable position; without relying on a hypothetical future recovery in demand to bail us out down the road.

Finding solutions to new challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges that we never imagined needing to overcome. Masks are now mandatory in Husco facilities and we require six feet of distance between

our associates. We’re evaluating where plexiglass barriers can be used, and we’ve closed our (brand new) cafeteria – all actions that other companies are taking as well. I wish we didn’t have to do these things. I want to go back to “business as normal,” but the good news is that these actions have had very little impact on productivity.

We’ve got essential manufacturing workers in our facilities, but everyone else is working from home. I’ve been amazed at how effectively the Husco team has adapted to a virtual work environment. I don’t think we’ve missed a beat. A lot of CEOs I’ve talked to are saying the same thing.

Then came our Mask Force project. It was a completely organic, grassroots project that started with several Husco employees who were literally working with their neighbors to figure out how to solve the immediate personal protective equipment shortage. In response, we did what we do best, which is innovate.

What makes our mask different?

Our new mask design isn’t rocket science, but it has some real benefits over existing disposable N95 facemasks. It fits better, which translates into improved efficacy. It can be cleaned and re-used. And most importantly, the design can be scaled very quickly into high-volume production. In a matter of weeks, working with colleagues at the Medical College, Briggs & Stratton and other local institutions, we got this project into production. Today, we’re building 1,000 units per day for local demand. If we can get the mask certified by NIOSH to the N95 standard, demand is essentially unlimited. We could go from 1,000 per day to 100,000 or more per day.

If we achieve NIOSH certification and scale to 100,000 per day, the mask project would become meaningful from a financial perspective. But what we’ve done to date has been all about community service, not about pivoting our business or redeploying our assets.

The Mask Force project was a really neat way to keep morale high during a difficult time. I know our people take a lot of pride in doing something positive to impact our community, and I do too.