GA 324 | From Software Engineers to Face Shield Manufacturers with Radek Pietruszewski

This week’s guest is Radek Pietruszewski. To help fight COVID-19 in Poland, Radek and his software engineering colleagues figured out how to quickly manufacture thousands of face shields. He and Ron discussed the details of this impressive project. A MP3 audio version of this episode is available for download here.

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• How things are going in Poland as far as COVID-19 (4:42)
• Radek’s background and how he got involved in face shield production (5:43)
• What die cutting looks like (9:17)
• Where they got the raw materials from (10:46)
• Where the face masks are going (14:07)
• The timeline (16:03)
• How continuous improvement played a role (18:03)
• The cycle times for the individual processes (22:28)
• How they dealt with packaging and shipping (24:08)
• What production is like now (27:32)
• What Radek learned through this experience (29:15)

Podcast Resources

• Right Click to Download this Podcast as an MP3
• Download a Free Audio Book at Audible.com
• Radek’s Podcast
• Radek on Twitter
• Warsaw Hackerspace
• Radek’s Face Shield Project
• Face Shield Image
• Die Cutting Video
• An Example Die
• Shipping the Face Shields
• Recycling Materials
• Face Shields in Use
• Manufacturing vs. Software Development

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