In This Episode: An American company that makes masks and other PPE chose NOT to ramp up production to help with the COVID pandemic. That sounds like a decision to be criticized, but it’s actually an example of Uncommon Sense. This episode explores why.

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* There are several photos scattered through the transcript, below.
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* Sources for this episode include Dallas Morning News and NPR.

Transcript
An American company that makes masks and other PPE chose NOT to ramp up production to help with the COVID pandemic. That sounds like a decision to be criticized, but it’s actually an example of Uncommon Sense. This episode explores why.
Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham.
Last week I promised to tell you the “counter-intuitive story about why someone chose not to do something extraordinary to help with this pandemic.” It sure doesn’t sound like Uncommon Sense, but it is, and you’ll understand why after you hear the whole story.
Mike Bowen is the executive vice president of a company called Prestige Ameritech, located in North Richland Hills, Texas, a suburb of Fort Worth. The company makes surgical masks, medical gowns, face shields and goggles, and even the coveted N95 respirator masks that nearly every hospital, EMS agency, and medical research facility desperately needs more of. In fact, Prestige Ameritech is the largest manufacturer in the United States for this kind of Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE.
Why import stuff from China when it’s made right here? And lately, a lot of the N95 masks coming out of China are fake — they’re not actually made to the standards required to ensure they actually filter out the nasty stuff they’re supposed to. You’d think Prestige Ameritech would be running their 220,000 square foot factory at full capacity, running three shifts working 24×7 to make as many masks as possible to fill the shortages. But they’re not.
It’s a top-notch company: they’re ISO 13485 Certified, which means they’ve passed the requirements laid out by the International Organization for Standardization for a comprehensive quality management system for the design and manufacture of medical devices. They’re FDA Registered, which means they passed various inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to assure their compliance with the FDA’s requirements before it could be listed as a registered facility.
They’ve also been recognized by the Historically Underutilized Business Zones (or “HUBZone”) program,