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CASE STUDY

Emergency Hospital Bed

Challenge

Amid the global health crisis, we were called upon to meet an unprecedented challenge: the potential for a severe shortage of emergency hospital beds for patients suffering from the novel coronavirus. Two sister brands –  TriEnda and Penda – offered a rapid response effort and provided innovative design and quick production to deliver an affordable, durable Emergency & Disaster Relief Bed to those in need. We also took it one step further and created custom room dividers as a sanitary solution for disaster relief environments and businesses requiring safety barriers.

DESIGN & ENGINEERING

PROTOTYPING

PRE-TOOL TESTING

SOURCING AND ASSEMBLY

Overview

The company’s experience in producing fold-down beds for the Class A trucking industry, combined with its experience in designing pallets as returnable packaging, could serve a uniquely important need as hospitalizations—and the expenses of field hospitals—mounted. Regular hospital beds are complex and often expensive to produce. The teams at TriEnda and Penda could offer an alternative.“We knew we could draw on our expertise in the trucking industry to offer a design that would be easy to sanitize, comfortable for patients and cost about a tenth of a normal hospital bed,” Kruger said.The company assembled a team of engineers and industrial artists to design a solution meeting that criteria. The goal was to put a line of hospital beds on the market within five weeks.

Solution

Shortly after the warnings of hospital bed shortages, we formed a critical partnership with our sister brand TriEnda, both companies part of parent company Kruger Family Industries (KFI). Acutely aware of the need for immediate action, our engineering and product development teams quickly got to work designing the new durable, cost-effective, easy-to-assemble Emergency & Disaster Relief Bed. Teaming up the expertise of both TriEnda and Penda enabled us to leverage our collective skills and knowledge to quickly assess the situation and find a strategic solution.

To improve comfort and safety in alternative care environments and other businesses, we also developed affordable and easy to assemble and install Custom Room Dividers. They offer a sanitary option for privacy not only in disaster relief environments and alternate care facilities, but also lend safe social distance barriers in barbershops and salons, restaurants, offices, and more.

UP TO

800

LBS WEIGHT CAPACITY

TIMELINE

5

WEEKS

Results

By late spring, TriEnda was supplying beds to hospitals. The Home Base Veteran and Family Care Hospital in Massachusetts placed an order for 200 beds. Among the first customers was the Aspirus Divine Savior in Portage, Wisconsin.

“I can’t believe how easy [the beds] were to assemble,” says Dan Arkins, senior director of development, Aspirus Divine Saviour. “Feedback from the clinical staff has been very positive. TriEnda was great to work with.”
The staff at Aspirus Divine Saviour saw another advantage to the beds. Portage is also home to TriEnda and sister company, Penda headquarters and plastics manufacturing facilities.

“Not only are we grateful to have items as useful as [the beds] as we plan for future surges in patients, but we are also so proud that they were created and manufactured in our very own town,” says Dr. Joshua Pogorelec, General Surgeon and Surgical Services Medical Director at Aspirus Divine Savior.

As the country learns to function under COVID-19, demand from grocery retailers and shipping companies has steadied, normalizing the rhythm of business. TriEnda grew its permanent product portfolio with the additions of the Humanitarian Disaster Relief bed and an Emergency Disaster Services (EDS) cot – for situations where many people must quickly be housed in temporary shelters. FEMA would go on to purchase 900+ beds, which are currently on-deck for use to aid victims of the recent hurricanes that hit Texas.