The coronavirus crisis poses a very special challenge for every individual and also for companies. In order to make their contribution to overcoming the situation, companies from the Schwaebisch Hall county in Germany have decided to enter into an unusual cooperation. 

The company Wrapping Solutions from Rosengarten near Schwaebisch Hall specializes in producing interior fittings for cars. In the face of the coronavirus crisis, the company decided to produce mouth and nose protection masks. Since March 23, a maximum of 24,000 masks per day are sewn at 20 workplaces. In the long term, the company plans to expand to 40 sewing workstations. The aim is to produce in two-shift operation. "According to estimates, around 14 million protective masks are needed in Germany every day," says managing director Wolfgang Schaller.

Optima now supports operations by optimizing the work processes. "We have built a device for folding face masks and successfully put it into operation at Wrapping Solutions on March 31," reports Werner Volk, who is responsible for new applications at Optima life science GmbH. This was previously done manually and proved to be a bottleneck in production. The machine-made fabric blanks are folded in the station and ultrasonically welded on both sides. In the last work step loops are sewn to the masks.

"We are very pleased with the technical support from a special machine manufacturer like Optima," says Schaller. This is a first step towards accelerating the production of the masks, he says. In order to further increase the company's production capacity, talks are currently underway on possible automation of this process.