Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) quickly reached a global pandemic status in 2020 creating a huge demand for personal protective and medical equipment. Additive manufacturing, in this context, became a solution to alleviate the demands of the healthcare sector. This article presents how lean manufacturing approaches and Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) helped to implement an additive manufacturing line for face shields production. The methodological approach was action research, in which undergraduate and graduate students, professionals, and researchers joined forces to produce and deliver 27,000 face shields. The article contributes towards the implementation of additive manufacturing for small batches production of product final parts and offers content for future discussions regarding production digitization.