COMING TOGETHER
RESPONSE TO COVID-19 WILL MAKE US ALL STRONGER by RICK SCHOSTEK
Honda is utilizing its manufacturing capabilities to produce vital medical equipment and gear to help those battling COVID-19. Last month, Honda began building an entirely new product in our 40-year history of building things in America – diaphragm compressors for life-saving ventilators to help victims of COVID-19. This vital activity is underway in a training center we established five years ago to help our associates develop manufacturing skills for the future, now home to the latest initiative in our company-wide effort to help provide solutions to many of the challenges posed by this pandemic. I’m humbled to be part of a manufacturing enterprise that is working to find ways to join this fight, with each of our business lines – automobiles, power equipment, power sports and aircraft – offering unique solutions and 28
support. And I’m proud that our response focuses on three vital and immediate human needs. We are working to employ our manufacturing know-how to produce medical equipment to help those battling COVID-19, addressing food insecurity at a time when so many families are struggling, and enabling our associates to serve as ‘virtual volunteers,’ to help people in need. At the onset of the pandemic, Honda associates at our facilities in North America inventoried the Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, that we had on hand, and 10 Honda facilities have now donated more than 200,000 items to healthcare providers and first responders, including badly needed equipment such as gloves, face
RIPON FORUM May 2020
