Management of the production of health care components in an emergency situation: the COVID-19 case

La gestione della produzione di componenti sanitari in situazione d'emergenza: il caso Covid-19. There is no doubt that the great protagonist of 2020 has been, and is, COVID-19. The public emergency was declared by the WHO at the beginning of the year, and its impact is still present in our daily lives. The COVID-19 novel virus was identified for the first time in Wuhan, China, and in a matter of weeks more and more countries detected new cases in their territory. The outbreak contagion caused thousands of deaths and pushed to the boundaries of public health systems worldwide. Moreover, the unprecedented event has had consequences in other aspects, like working conditions, drop on consumption, disruption of supply chain, border locking, quarantines and sanitary equipment shortage. This thesis discusses the new advances in manufacturing systems and pursues their application for restoring the health equipment stockpiles to face the COVID-19. For that purpose, a literature review is done to build up a consistent manufacturing systems background. Analyzing the latest industrial advancement has vital importance, since if used correctly, they can provide different alternatives to alleviate the health crisis. Therefore, incoming studies about the virus performance and the societal response have been reviewed too, and complemented with daily news and official reports to update data. The relevance of the topic in the current times turns the project more interesting and challenging, being important at academic and personal point of view. The reader would notice the lack of protective garment and respirators has activated the collaboration from enterprises from very different industries, offering their knowledge, technology, resources and time for finding out alternatives to contain the virus spread as well as annihilate it.