SEAT starts the production of emergency ventilators at its Martorell facilities to contribute to the crisis caused by COVID-19. The device has been authorized by the Spanish Agency of Medicine for clinic investigation and the daily production volume will be constantly adjusted with the authorities according to demand to avoid unnecessary stocks. The company will work to reach a production volume of 300 emergency ventilators a day at the SEAT Leon assembly line.

The device, called OxyGEN, was free hardware designed by the company Protofy.xyz and under the medical coordination of doctors Dr. Manel Puig Domingo (Germans Trias y Pujol Investigation Institute), Dr. Oriol Estrada (Hospital Germans Trias i Pujol), y Dr. Josep María Nicolás (Hospital Clínic), in a collaborative work against the clock for the past two weeks to make this project a reality. In the industrialization process, lead by SEAT, different partners have collaborated.

SEAT President and Vice-president for Finance and IT Carsten Isensee, emphasised that “responding to the shortage of medical supplies is a priority as well as a responsibility for a company with great industrial capacity like SEAT. Any support is needed now to fight the spread of COVID-19 together.”

This emergency ventilator is being produced on the SEAT Leon assembly line at SEAT’s facilities and has an adapted windscreen wiper motor. Each device has more than 80 electronic and mechanical components and passes a thorough quality control with ultraviolet light sterilisation.

SEAT Vice-president for Production and Logistics, Dr. Christian Vollmer, who is leading the project pointed out that “teamwork and collaboration is now more important than ever so that together we can try to meet the demand from health centres. At SEAT we have an advanced mass production system and in a situation like the present one it is our responsibility to make it available to Spanish society.”

SEAT Vice-president for Legal Services and Good Governance Luis Comas stressed that “this process would not have been possible without the support of the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Healthcare Products and the personal involucration of its director and the Spanish minister of health.”

SEAT is strongly committed to helping the health system and professionals in every way possible to slow down the spread of COVID-19. SEAT is also currently working on and analysing the viability of other projects that will be announced once they have passed all the necessary health tests and cleared for release by the corresponding authorities. To this end, a team of professionals from the areas of Production, Health and Emergencies, Development, Logistics and Quality, among others, have been working against the clock for the past two week to make these projects a reality.