Now Devoid of Cars, GM Assembly Plant to Fill With Masks
It was a sad day when General Motors all but mothballed its Oshawa, Ontario assembly plant — a manufacturing site that had cranked out cars since 1907 — but new production will soon be underway.
Not of sedans or pickups, the latter of which happened to be the plant’s last vehicular products when it ceased assembly in 2019, but masks. A lot of masks.
Like GM’s sudden switch to personal protective equipment production in Michigan, the automaker’s Canadian arm will likewise dive into the assembly of PPE to feed the Canadian healthcare sector.
There’ll be no ventilators coming out of Oshawa Assembly, which is still idled after performing final assembly on its last previous-gen full-size pickup last year, but there will be masks of the basic, non-N95 variety.
“We plan to manufacture approximately one million masks per month at cost for the Canadian government with an estimate of 50 employees supporting two shifts of production,” GM Canada said in a statement Friday. “The project till requires completion of additional work with our governments and our Unifor partners and we will provide updates as we get ready to begin production.”
More than 2,000 workers lost their jobs when Oshawa Assembly closed its doors in December, the result of a global streamlining effort that saw Lordstown Assembly in Ohio sold off to a fledgling EV maker. Unlike that plant, Oshawa will remain in GM’s hands, converting into a stamping operation and an autonomous vehicle test facility with far fewer workers on site. Once upon a time, Oshawa built Chevrolet Impalas and Camaros.
The masks going into production in Oshawa in the near future will be a direct copy of those made in Warren, Michigan.
[Image: General Motors]
More by Steph Willems
Comments
Join the conversation
LOL this place has gone to s#!t. Can't say anything lest the B&B AKA douchebag clan chime in with their expertise, which includes crapping on anyone and anything they don't agree with. Don't worry everyone, sure ol john boy there is an expert and had a career in engineering yesterday, but today he/she is a Doctor. This place is a f@#king joke.
Covid-19: Not Nearly As Dangerous As You Think A sober look at the facts. Mon Apr 27, 2020 Robert J. Shillman, Ph.D. 42 Share to Facebook653Share to TwitterShare to More90Share to Print There is no “urgent crisis” due to Covid-19 that requires a lock-down of citizens. That conclusion is based on the following: * The probability of dying from the virus in the US is very low: 1.5 out of 10,000. * The death rate attributed to Covid-19 in the US, which has placed increasing restrictions on people, is about the same as the death rate in Sweden, 2.0 out of 10,000, which has placed very limited restrictions on people. Read below for objective details that lead to that conclusion: Sources of Data: I used the most recent data for Covid-19 from the four websites below on 4/24/20. [1] The Johns Hopkins’ website (for deaths by country…other than in the US). [2] Worldometers (for deaths in the US). [3] CDC (for deaths by age). [4] Wikipedia (for population): The US has a population of 329,064,917, and Sweden has a population of 10,036,379. Probability of Dying from Covid-19 in the U.S. The number of deaths from the virus in the US is 50,988. The probability of dying from the virus in the U.S., therefore, is equal to the number of deaths divided by the U.S. population: 50,988/329,064,917 = 0.00015 = 0.015% = 1.5 chances out of 10,000 -- a very, very low probability. For comparison, 61,099 Americans died of the ordinary flu two seasons ago. That means that the chance of dying from the ordinary flu was 1.9 out of 10,000, which is higher than the Covid-19 death rate. Furthermore, when you take into account that most of the deaths from Covid-19 were of older people with underlying medical issues, the chance of younger (under 55), healthy individuals dying from the virus is much, much lower -- probably 1.5 chances out of 100,000. Probability of Dying from Covid-19 in Sweden. Sweden has had 2,152 deaths out of a population of 10.12 million, so the probability of dying from the virus in Sweden is about 0.02% = 2 chances out of 10,000; very low and not much different than the US death rate. Conclusions: * If you’re over 55 or have serious health issues, there is a greater risk of dying from Covid-19 (or any flu) than if you’re under 55 and are in generally good health. So the prudent thing for older people or people with underlying health conditions to do is follow the CDC guidelines carefully and stay away from crowds. * Everyone else should just chill-out and go back to work. After receiving his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence at M.I.T., Doctor Shillman founded Cognex Corporation, currently the world’s leading provider of machine vision systems, computers that can “see,” that are used in factories around the world to guide the manufacturing and distribution of products ranging from potato chips to computer chips.
“... there will be masks of the basic, non-N95 variety.” Only the N95 and N99 masks are effective against viruses!
I will die from reading these half-baked comments before I die of anything else. Good God.