An Oskaloosa business has a key role in helping treat those who have the coronavirus.
Interpower president Bob Wersen says his company makes electrical cords for various products. That includes cords for ventilators that are used in hospitals to treat patients with respiratory problems like those caused by COVID-19.
Wersen says Interpower has extra capacity to make cords and that’s a good thing because the demand is rising. “We have an order board that shows how many cords we are scheduled to produce in each of the next four weeks. And we have seen that grow by about 40 percent just in the last two weeks,” according to Wersen.
He says they can meet the demand for the vital pieces of equipment. “Our operation alone will help get someplace in the neighborhood of 10,000 to 20,000 ventilators to market quickly,” he says. Wersen says his company’s product has gone from routine to very important in a critical time.
“I feel really good about manufacturing a product that is absolutely critical to saving people’s lives. That really puts meaning into the process. Sometimes the work can become routine and not very interesting,” Wersen says. “When you know that it’s really important, it adds meaning to what we’re doing.”
Wersen says Interpower has been a supplier for several years to major medical producers in the U.S. and the United Kingdom.
(By Joe Lancello, KBOE, Oskaloosa)
