Updated 8th July 2020
STI is dedicated to working with its employees, contractors, customers and suppliers to address the impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
The health and wellbeing of our people remains our top priority and we are closely monitoring and following guidance from the Government, NHS and World Health Organisation. We have a cross-functional team working to ensure the health and safety of our employees, contractors and visitors while mitigating the potential operational impacts of COVID-19.
All employees who can are now working from home and can continue to be contacted via email or phone. We have also increased our flexible working arrangements to help staff who have been affected by school closures.
For our teams working at our manufacturing sites we have several measures in place to help protect them. We have made the decision to maintain the 2-metre distancing rule based on our success of controlling the health risks across our sites to date.
The measures we currently have in place include:
- Introduction of face masks for all employees and visitors to our sites
- Floor markings to ensure walkways abide by the 2-metre distancing rule at all sites
- A one-way system in place for walking around the sites to prevent breaking the 2-metre distancing rule
- A review of work areas and moving employees to ensure workstations/desks are distanced 2-metres apart wherever possible
- A social distancing checklist with regular management reviews to ensure rules are complied with
- Limiting the seating area in canteens to ensure 2-metre distancing is applied
- Signage to remind employees to clean their tables with the provided cleaning materials once they have finished in the canteen area
- Rules and signage in place for smaller communal areas e.g. toilets, conference rooms and kitchen areas
- An increased availability of hand gels around the sites
- Provision of tissues in communal areas
- Provision of disinfectant wipes for employees to take responsibility for the refreshing of their desks and equipment
- An increase in regularity of cleaning door handles, push plates to open doors, fridge doors etc particularly in high traffic areas
- An increase in posters around the site providing information on cleanliness and NHS guidelines to raise awareness, highlighting symptoms and actions
- Provision of Microsoft Teams to those who need it to enable work meetings to continue
- The elimination all non-essential business travel
- A restriction on visitors to sites unless critical
- Holding thermometers on sites so that we can take employees and visitors temperatures
- Ensuring our sites have appropriate resources available to support ongoing operations in accordance with local regulatory requirements
Supply Chain
We are monitoring our supply chain closely to understand any potential impact and activate business contingency plans. The impact on the Supply Chain impact includes the following:
- Reduced manufacturing capabilities now impacting throughout the world due to social distancing measures
- PCB lead times extended to 12 weeks in China
- The impact of lockdown in factories throughout the world and starting to see some manufacturers extending lead times
- Improvements in courier services over the last couple of weeks where previously impacted
Expected stages:
- Passive lead times extending across various manufacturers
- Further lead times extending across all manufacturers later in the year and parts going on to allocation
- All components being affected by the impact of the virus around the world and expect lead times increasing in most if not all commodities
- Impact of Brexit to be considered too while the plans start to be implemented into the UK
STI are working closely with the supply chain to minimise the impact of this virus and continue to monitor and update our customers as any impacts that are known.
We are working closely with our customers to mitigate this issue, including:
- Working with customers to place their forecast POs earlier to reduce the impact and scheduling deliveries with the supply chain
- Working with customers to place certain parts in buffer stock
- Identifying key lead time parts and securing the already known long lead times
- Monitoring the supplier market trends and feeding back to our customer base
- STI Procurement Team all have the required tools to work from home if required