The following communication is a general overview of the COVID-19 situation. R&D Altanova account teams will be communicating directly to customers regarding the impact on their specific orders.

General:

Our manufacturing sites in New Jersey and Pennsylvania remain open. All of our employees that can work from home are working from home. This seems to be working fine and we have not seen a negative impact on the workflow. We will continue this until the situation is normalized. We are monitoring the situation closely and will inform you of any additional steps we should take based on directives from our state and local governments and guidance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

We have doubled the frequency of deep bleach cleaning of the bathrooms and kitchens and other high-touch area in all sites. We have ample disinfectant cleaners and hand-sanitizers available in all areas of the office and the factory for frequent use as well as cleaning at shift change. We have restricted inflow of visitors to our sites, except for business-critical needs.

Furthermore, we have been working diligently with our suppliers to ensure there is adequate inventory on hand to manage lead times on items such as drill bits, laminate and chemistry. We expanded our spares parts list for all the tools starting in December to ensure we have ample long lead time items on hand in the factory.

We have a contingency plan in case a person in the factory comes down with COVID-19. Per CDC guideline, we will assess the people in contact with the potential patient to low, medium and high-risk base on the proximity to the patient, age and health conditions. If a case occurs in the factory, we will quarantine high and medium risk individuals, do a deep clean and resume production. We have hired a professional company to perform the deep clean as necessary. They have committed to be on site with one-hour notice. Since we run three shifts, we feel reasonably confident we can continue production even if we are forced to self-quarantine a complete cell or even a complete shift.

Manufacturing:

New Jersey: Our board factory operates in New Jersey. The local government has asked non-essential businesses to stop operation; Fortunately, our business is considered essential manufacturing and we continue to operate as normal. We are experiencing some absenteeism due to vigilant management of not allowing employees to come to work if they have any sign of cough or fever, but overall, we continue to run and manage the absenteeism with over time.

Pennsylvania:

Our RDIS, Assembly and Test operations are in Pennsylvania. While the local government has asked non-essential businesses to stop operation, our business is considered essential manufacturing and we continue to operate as normal. We are experiencing some absenteeism due to vigilant management of not allowing employees to come to work if they have any sign of cough or fever, but overall, we continue operation and manage the absenteeism with overtime.

Suppliers: We have been working diligently with our suppliers to ensure there is adequate inventory on hand to manage lead times on items such as drill bits, laminate and chemistry. We expanded our spares parts list for all the tools starting in December to ensure we have ample long lead time items on hand in the factory. On occasion we had to airlift some material, but overall, we have not seen an impact on our business. We are closely monitoring the supply and will alert the customers if we see potential impact on delivery.

Effect on Logistics, labor pay and out of scope expenses:

We are expecting a reduction in the air service worldwide with potential impact on total freight capacity and possible rate increases. In addition to freight, we expect to incur out of scope charges including alternate sourcing, overtime and expedite costs. We will do our best to limit these but an early discussion on how we should manage the out of scope charges will be helpful to us and allows us to respond to the situation quickly.
These are uncharted territories and the situation is changing every day. Our objective is to keep our employees and their families safe and do our very best to support our customers.

Thank you for your continued support and trust in R&D Altanova.