Toyota is ramping up its face shield production to fight COVID-19

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the automotive industry to a halt. Car companies, however, despite the downtime are doing their best to help in the fight against the virus. Some brands are retooling or even partnering up with medical equipment specialists in order to produce ventilators, facemasks, and even personal protective equipment. Toyota is one such brand. Toyota Motor Corporation together with its group of companies is engaged in the full-scale production of medical face shields in its home country. The brand is expanding its production capacity from 500 to 600 units per week by about 20 times to increase production to 40,000 units per month. The Japanese brand is now capable of producing 2,000 units a day as of April 27, 2020. Toyota is even planning to further increase its in-house production capabilities in order to reach its desired output of 70,000 pieces of face shields a month. This roughly equates to about 3,600 pieces per day.

The Toyota Group of companies is also helping out in the production of face shields as well. Hino and Daihatsu are also joining in on production but are still in their trial production stages. These two companies, however, are doing their best to provide medical face shields to medical facilities in their immediate areas. Even the industrial sector of the Japanese brand aims to join in on the production as Toyota Industries Corporation plans to make 10,000 units per month starting from April 29, 2020. The Japanese brand’s Auto Body Co., Ltd sub-company is also seeking to join in on the effort as well. It plans to start its production of medical face shields by mid-may.

With the Japanese brand slowly ramping up production, the Toyota Group has positioned itself to support the round-the-clock efforts of the front lines of the medical sector. The production of the medical face shields is part of the brand’s Kokoro Hakobu Project. With the pandemic is yet to curve the Japanese brand is doing its best in order to stop the spread and by providing what it can to medical front line staff.