Mentor

May 07, 2023

At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, RB Sigma's Medical Division, RB Medical Supply, chartered an Antonov 124, the world's largest cargo plane, filled with millions of personal protective equipment to help alleviate supply shortages in the United States.

Recognizing the country was seriously deficient in the manufacturing of masks and other filtering facepiece respirators, the Mentor-based company established a manufacturing facility in July of that year with capabilities of making 15 million masks per month.

Through the Retooling and Reshoring Grant, RB Sigma was awarded $500,000 in aid to bring automation to the manufacturing of masks.

The company quickly then started designing and building its own machines to manufacture facemasks.

As the pandemic progressed, RB Sigma created ArmorVax, a vaccine management software, to help local health departments administer the vaccine to nearly 700,000 Ohioans.

According to the company, the ArmorVax system enhances the vaccination process for both the patient and administrator by automating the manual data entry process and accurately reporting to the state's immunization registry in real-time.

To date, the manufacturer has shipped more than 30 million units of PPE to thousands of different health care and industrial partners, along with consumers in all 50 states.

The company continues to ship millions of items each month to these organizations from its warehouse and medical supply store, officials confirmed.

Recently, RB Sigma's domestically manufactured N95 Filtering Facepiece Respirator was approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

"The process was extremely thorough and extensive," said RB Sigma President Justin Bloyd. "It included multiple rounds of product testing, user experience studies, and an audit of our manufacturing process to ensure the respirator could be repeatedly manufactured with the utmost adherence to our quality management system, which is comprised of over 300 documents ranging from policies and procedures to logs.

"This is a tremendous accomplishment for our team and was (also) the culmination of thousands of hours of research and designing," he added. "This achievement could not have been done without the dedication of every employee at our company.

RB Sigma is only the 20th U.S. manufacturer to receive NIOSH approval during the pandemic.

"RB Sigma is a prime example of Mentor's vibrant economy fostering growth, particularly in manufacturing," said Kevin Malecek, director of economic development and international trade for Mentor. "Their exponential progression as a company in the last two years exhibits their spirit of innovation and drive, and why Mentor is a great place to do business."

Comprising 50,000 square feet between two facilities, the company is currently adding durable medical equipment and home medical equipment to its portfolio to "continue being a value-added supplier for patients and health care facilities nationwide."

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