The Whitmer Administration has announced that businesses across Michigan are now able to apply for $349 billion in Paycheck Protection Program forgivable loans through the U.S. Small Business Administration. Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II was joined by former Lt. Governor, and current president of the Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM) Brian Calley and Bob Doyle, president and CEO of the Michigan Association of CPAs, in launching a new statewide website, MIpaycheckprotection.com, to provide businesses with key resources to assist with the PPP application and loan process and ensure the greatest amount of federal funding is able to be used by small businesses for economic relief efforts throughout the state.

"A lot of people want to help manufacture PPE protective gear but don't know how to get started," says Jeff Trevorrow, CEO of Columbus Advanced Manufacturing Systems in Ohio. CAMS is partnering with its customer, fitness equipment manufacturer Rogue Fitness, in rapid production of Personal Protective Equipment that is reusable for front-line responders in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. "Rogue Fitness's CEO saw this need coming several weeks ago and ordered 5 extra 3D printers," Trevorrow tells us, "which is about $360,000 of equipment plus hard tooling to make molds, and they're giving [the gear] away for free. They organized this, and we jumped in."

Manufacturers across the Midwest are rushing at historic speeds to create protective gear, ventilator components, and other hospital gear for front-line healthcare workers saving lives in the coronavirus outbreak, which in Michigan is now increasing in confirmed cases by up to 1,500 cases per day. Susan Carlock is a former ER nurse, so when her stamping and component manufacturing company Mursix Corporation in Yorktown, Indiana, heard about the urgent need for PPE, ventilators, and other medical supplies at Michigan hospitals, she sprang into action. Carlock is now VP of Business Development at Mursix, and like many others around the Great Lakes manufacturing belt, she knows the importance of moving quickly to retool a production line normally used to produce parts for the automotive industry to creating face shields, ventilator parts, and hospital bed components. It can't happen overnight, especially at a time when smaller manufacturers are fighting against urgent conditions and a shortage of materials being scooped up by larger companies. Mursix began speaking with Beaumont Health System in Detroit, and soon they had arrangements to create components for a number of hospital supplies so desperately needed in the fight against COVID-19.