Watch: Nisco switches gears from car parts to medical gowns

BREMEN, Ind.—When a regional hospital in Indiana put out a plea for personal protective equipment, the area business community got to work, including automotive sealing systems supplier Nishikawa Cooper L.L.C. (Nisco).

To get started, Jerry Chavez, the president and CEO of the Marshall County Economic Development Corp., said he began matching local manufacturing capabilities with medical needs. He learned Nisco has equipment to produce vehicle door components that also is used in the garment industry.

Chavez wondered if Nisco could produce protective gowns for medical staff and first responders on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak in Indiana.

The business development director contacted Leah Oden, the plant manager at Nisco's facility in Bremen about 20 miles outside of South Bend. She got the company's experts involved, namely Vice President of Engineering Chad Klopfenstein and Innovation Engineer Kevin O'Brien.

Chavez arranged a conference call between the regional hospital and Nisco. Two days later, the first gown was produced. Nisco engineers initially worked from a picture of a medical gown, according to Mike Esselburn, Nisco's human resources director.

"They reversed engineered it to make the isolation gown," Esselburn said in an email. "Kevin made three different designs, until settling on the current gown."

The opaque gown fits over the arms and head and then ties in the back. The design could be produced with Nisco's multi-function laser cutters.

Before production began, Chavez said the regional hospital spared two gowns as samples, which helped Nisco develop the cutting pattern. A custom program was written and installed on Nisco's equipment and polyethylene was selected for the material.

Esselburn said PE is used for sound-deadening seals for the company's automotive application.

"After some minor research, we found out that it (PE) qualified for a Level 4 isolation gown per CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines," Esselburn said.

About 5,000 gowns were made and delivered to Indiana hospitals, EMT's, nursing homes, local fire and police departments. Nisco also is filling orders ranging from small requests for 50 gowns to large ones for 20,000 gowns.

"We are producing the gowns with a small work crew to help comply with social distances orders and allow us to still safely produce these critical needed items," Esselburn said. "Our goal is to continue production until our automotive customers start ordering needed products from this equipment again, at which time we will change back over to normal operations."

Founded in 1986, Nisco is owned jointly between Nishikawa Rubber Co. and Cooper Standard Automotive. The business specializes in extruded rubber products for all Japanese automotive companies, GM, Jaguar, Aston Martin and Ferrari, according to its website. The multi-function cutters are part of a step in creating vehicle door sound dampening products.

Chavez said he was impressed at how quickly Nisco engineers moved the medical gown effort from idea to design to production in just a few days. In this case, the conference call happened on a Wednesday, the first gown was produced on a Friday, the final product was developed over the weekend, the prototypes were evaluated on a Monday, and production began that week for the local area.

"I was totally impressed by the we-need-to-help posture taken by Nisco as well as the commitment by their management," Chavez said. "They worked through a re-engineering process to develop an identical isolation gown that is seen on the evening news by medical professionals treating COVID-19 patients."

Nisco has about 1,200 employees at three manufacturing plants in northern Indiana and a sales and engineering group located in Livonia, Mich. Many were placed on furlough April 9.

However, Esselburn said, "Bremen still is producing gowns and has increased production to accommodate increasing demands."

Nisco's parent companies, NRC and Cooper Standard, are based in Hiroshima, Japan, and Novi, Mich., respectively.