Rockwell Automation is committed to health, safety, and doing all we can to maintain a high level of service. Many local, state and country governments are issuing shelter in place or stay at home orders for all non-essential business. What we do is vital to the supply chain and operations in critical industries, including pharmaceutical, biotech, defense, and food industries that are keeping global communities healthy and safe during this crisis.
This means that we will continue to operate our business, consistent with any local requirements, regulations and restrictions. We are continuing to work with all governments to ensure that we can provide products and services to our customers.
Because our operations are considered business critical industry infrastructure that is essential to health and safety, Rockwell Automation's manufacturing, distribution centers, service centers, SSB solution centers, and engineering facilities in the U.S will remain open. We are working with governments around the world to ensure our critical operations can remain open globally.
We will continue to take appropriate measures to protect the health and safety of our employees who work at or from those facilities.
We are actively implementing business continuity plans
Our team is working across the global regions to help ensure we are implementing our manufacturing and distribution business continuity plan in all locations. We continue to monitor and address concerns such as staffing constraints, production operations, and possible transport issues due critical infrastructure governmental mandates. We continue to evaluate contingency plans throughout the network.
We are taking additional measures to protect our supply base and position our inventory to support our customers who are deemed as critical and essential. In some instances, we have extended the lead time on certain orders to provide accurate delivery information. We also established procedures and a global prioritization process to ensure we are meeting the demand of these critical industries.
Stay safe and healthy,
Rockwell Automation Customer Care
How we can work together
We encourage the following actions to help us all control the situation and help all of us serve our customers.
- Resist making significant changes to your demand. Simply put, do not panic buy. As a result of the pandemic, our manufacturing and suppliers' ability to react to significant increases in demand is limited and will cause systemic delivery issues.
- If you have critical needs: Continue to work with your authorized distributor partner, your Rockwell Automation sales team and your local Customer Care team.
Additional actions we are taking
Our actions are based on guidance and information provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO). We will follow all country and/or local government regulations and restrictions.
- Monitoring effect on our Manufacturing Facilities: We have seen varying impacts across our global manufacturing locations. Broad quarantine measures have had an impact on absenteeism rates across multiple sites. We are monitoring the situation closely and ramping up resources and operations without compromising the safety of our employees.
- Assessing our supply base: We remain in frequent contact with our largest suppliers in the regions most affected. And, we're constantly assessing our supply base to ensure we are prepared to respond to critical areas of operations, inventory build-up, business continuity planning, and heightened awareness of hygiene practices.
- Monitoring effect on logistics - freight capacity: Freight continues to move both regionally and globally across our network. Transit times and capacity will vary with the effects of coronavirus (COVID-19). Because of the recent reduction in commercial airline flights and cargo space, we have secured additional flight capacity, explored dedicated charter flights, and have contingency plans for high volume lanes.
Social distancing best practices. We are encouraging employees to practice social distancing. This means, wherever possible, remaining out of large group settings, avoiding mass gatherings and maintaining distance with others, recommended at four to six feet, (or 1.2 to 1.8 meters) apart.
Visitors to Rockwell Automation facilities. We are limiting visitors to Rockwell Automation facilities to business essential need only, and are encouraging people to conduct meetings and discussions virtually. For business essential visits, visitor screening guidelines will be applied to prohibit visitors who are ill or have traveled to restricted locations within a certain time period.
Domestic meetings/events/training. We have cancelled events that involve large groups of people, and will evaluate future events individually, considering timing, size, attendance and location.
Employees are working from home. Employees in office locations in geographies where there are a large number of reported cases have been directed to work from home or continue to work from home, wherever possible. This helps reduce the spread of the virus. We have directed any employee feeling ill or with any flu-like symptoms to stay home and seek medical attention immediately.
Enhanced cleaning in our facilities and major locations. Our Environmental Health and Safety Team continues to work with our cleaning vendors and food service providers to ensure safety and good cleaning practices are part of our standard operating procedures.
Increased employee communication on good safety practices. These include staying home when sick, respiratory etiquette, and hand hygiene best practices, avoiding touching the face, shaking hands or hugging. Our global security team is available 24/7 with emergency numbers published and communicated to all employees.
Resources and contact information
Our team of global engineering specialists are ready to assist you from one of our global remote support centers. Additionally, you can also access over 100,000 expert-written technical articles in our Support Center.
If monitoring and maintenance of critical applications, assets or OT Infrastructure become a challenge, we offer remote monitoring and administration services to help minimize your risk of downtime. We also offer virtual training classes to supplement instructor-led courses, which are temporarily suspended. Please contact your local Rockwell Automation sales office or authorized distributor partner if you'd like to learn more about any of these service offerings.
