At the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, the state of Massachusetts assembled a manufacturing emergency response team as part of its efforts to respond to the desperate need for personal protective equipment (PPE), particularly masks and gowns. The Massachusetts Emergency Response Team (M-ERT)—aided by MIT faculty, students, staff, and alumni—helped local manufacturers produce more than 9 million pieces of PPE as well as large volumes of hand sanitizer, disinfectants, and test swabs.

Building on the experiences and knowledge gained through the work of M-ERT, a new project, which was recently awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is developing a network collaboration model designed to help ecosystems organize and enable manufacturers to rapidly “pivot” in an emergency, from producing their standard products to producing PPE or other urgently needed goods.

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