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CPG talents meet the needs of the COVID-19 Crisis

By Peter Clarke posted 05-13-2020 14:09

  
CPG talents meet the needs of the COVID-19 Crisis
Read time: 2 minutes

At a time when there’s a lot of difficult information to absorb, we wanted to provide some bright, happy news about a corporate partnership that quickly pivoted to do some good in local communities.  
 
As part of PepsiCo’s ongoing efforts to provide relief to people and communities impacted by COVID-19, PepsiCo partnered with Product Ventures’ Prototyping and Realization Lab in Plano, Texas to provide face shields to healthcare workers. As local communities were reporting a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) to use in their fight against COVID-19, PepsiCo and the Product Ventures team were able to leverage their long-term relationship to quickly assemble the right people, resources, materials and equipment to address this issue. Volunteers from both companies convened at PepsiCo’s Plano lab facility, a sanitary, food-safe environment, to fabricate, package, and ship these face shields to local hospitals including the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is on the frontlines of responding to the pandemic.
 
“We’re so grateful for our ongoing relationship with PepsiCo and are proud of the partnership demonstrated in response to this challenge,” said Peter Clarke, CEO and founder of Product Ventures. “Our designers regularly face condensed timelines and deliver quick and clever solutions to difficult problems, so we were uniquely positioned to react to this crisis and provide help.”
 
The team developed over 20 iterations of the design. Scalability was a driving factor in their design approach to ensure demand could be easily met. The co-lab’s design can be manufactured in high quantities using different gauges of PET in case of potential shortages. This adaptable approach maintains the scalability without compromising the protection of the face shield.
 
The packaging design was given careful consideration early in the process to enable quick and easy distribution. One 12 in. x 14 in. x 6 in. box contains 120 flat face shields, more than four times the quantity in a box of standard face shields. This one box can be carried by a single person, allowing for easy and efficient access, distribution, and storage.
 
This is just a small part of PepsiCo’s broader relief efforts, which include a commitment of more than $50 million focused on serving nutritious meals to people impacted by COVID-19 and providing vital support for healthcare workers, as well as testing and screening services.
 
Face shields are being offered to medical professionals in Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states as needed. They are currently being manufactured in PepsiCo’s Plano, Texas and Barrington, Illinois locations. Between the two facilities, more than 2,000 face shields have already been produced and the team has the capability to quickly manufacture more if needed.
 
You can see photos in the link below on our website: http://www.productventures.com/covid19-face-shield

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07-24-2020 10:30

Thank you for your comments! A broader takeaway from this experience was the ease of assembly for the end-user. Using folded disposable food-safe materials allowed for the shields to be stacked flat in high quantities. One of our prototyping specialists is an origami wizard! He showed our team this folded design for the headband so it will lay flat in a box and can unfold outwards for use as a face shield. This helped with loading the boxes with the maximum amount of units, storage, and created an easy assembly experience for the healthcare worker.

07-09-2020 15:13

Peter, what can other companies learn from this effort? Can this be more broadly applied?

06-05-2020 08:06

Sounds like a great example of rapid innovation -and just when needed.