Whirlpool builds respirators for healthcare workers, 'to replace N95 masks and visor'

Christian Gianni, Whirlpool VP of Technology, joins Yahoo Finance's Alexis Christoforous and Brian Sozzi to discuss the creation of respirators, alongside its partner Dow and Reynolds Consumer Products. Gianni also weighs in the potential for future innovation at Whirlpool.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, people across the globe are bracing for a potential second wave of the coronavirus. We already have new cases popping up in Wuhan, China. And of course, health care workers around the world are on the frontlines of fighting this pandemic. Whirlpool is hoping to help in that fight. Joining us now is Whirlpool's VP of Technology Christian Gianni.

Christian, good to see you this morning. Tell us what Whirlpool is doing here. I understand you're doing these new products in conjunction with Dow and Reynolds. What are you making, and what do you hope that's going to do for those frontline workers?

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Good morning, Alex. It's great to be on. So you mentioned we partnered with Dow and also Reynolds to help develop what is actually called a PAPR, a powered air-purifying respirator. It all started with a call from our CEO Marc Bitzer, who is very close to our community and also the Michigan hospitals, and could see the need to have more protective equipment for our hospital workers. We went to the hospital. We kind of understood their biggest need was in the area of the N95 masks and the visors.

We started a small team here working to understand, you know, how could we provide something as an alternative to that without stealing from the existing supply chains of those two items. And we kind of ended up developing a PAPR. We didn't know what a PAPR was at the time. But through a very rapid series of innovations and time to design with the hospital workers and with our partners Dow and Reynolds, we came up with the PAPR.

BRIAN SOZZI: Christian, these are-- these-- I was looking at a photo of them, pretty intricate machines here. How many of them can you make this year?

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Well, at the moment, we have the capacity to do about 500 a day, right? And once they have those units, they can use them, obviously, ongoingly. And the key difference with our PAPR is we have a reusable hood-- sorry, a disposable hood. And so every time they go into a hot environment, they can don a new hood and have a clean one. And that is a very cost-effective hood. As we-- as I said before, we tried to design it in a way that we could replace the N95 mask and the visors.

So that is where we've come up with. And our partners at Reynolds are already close to making us a million hoods that we can donate to the hospital systems. And between ourselves and Dow, we're going to donate the first 2,000 units. And then if there's a demand for them, we'll continue to make them.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: That was my next question, Christian. Where is demand coming from? Do you have deals with health care workers or hospitals in certain parts of the country right now to deliver these devices?

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Well, at the moment, we've been focused on three areas where our partners are. So that's down in Texas, also Louisiana and in Michigan. We are working with about 20 hospitals at the moment, and we've got six that we are delivering to. We've delivered already 500 to Lakeland, the local hospital, and then we're starting to fulfill the other orders that we have.

But we're really focused on there. If you go to our website, we've set up a little website called WINHealthLabs.com. And you can inquire there and send us your interests. It would be great to get interest here because we really don't know how many people would need these. And obviously, we need to fill our supply chains so we can have the raw materials available to make the products and have continuity of supply.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Christian, as VP of technology there at Whirlpool, what does something like this mean for innovation in other areas of your division, innovation with the products that are really the bread and butter of Whirlpool?

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Yeah, Alexis, that's a very good question. We obviously knew nothing about the standards required to play in the medical industry. We've learned a lot with NIOSH, who's done the approvals for us. We've also learned a lot about what we need to do to deal with the viruses with the FDA. And both of those agencies have been fantastic in the way that they've reacted with us throughout this crisis.

But we've certainly learned a lot about what you need to do to deal with viruses. And obviously, you know, we're in the residential appliance market. A lot of those appliances are about sanitizing your products. And we will be doing development based on the learnings that we've done there to be able to do something hopefully in the future for those areas.

BRIAN SOZZI: You know, Christian, as Alexis mentioned, you do head up R&D at Whirlpool. We're all home. We've all been home, working from home for months. Is there some kind of new trend or consumer need that you think Whirlpool will go after or develop a new product that's not in the marketplace and what is it?

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Obviously, there are a lot of ways people are going to change the way they behave because of, you know, the fact that we're dealing with living with this virus. You know, it's probably a little early to talk about some of the products that we are working on. But we certainly know that there will be a need for new and different products, and a lot of those products are probably very applicable to run with our brands that we have at Whirlpool.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, let's leave it there. Christian Gianni, Whirlpool VP of technology, thanks for taking some time this morning.

CHRISTIAN GIANNI: Thank you.