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Automation Leaders Share Insights Surrounding the COVID-19 Pandemic & Its Impact on the Industry
The COVID-19 pandemic has had drastic affects to people and businesses across the United States and the globe. As we all navigate this together, Direct Recruiters would like to extend a message to clients, candidates and their families to be healthy and safe during this challenging time. Our Automation team has been connected with multiple Automation organizations and leaders who are willing to share helpful information, advice and insights regarding the initiatives their organization is taking in the pandemic to manage the uncertainty, assist in the fight against COVID-19, how to keep employees engaged right now, and more. Thank you to all participants for the helpful information you provided.
Jump to interviews: Bradley Schowanson - Yaskawa, Brian Clark - Fastenal, Tom Subaric - Oakley Industrial Machinery, Patrick Coakley - Plant Automation Group
Bradley Schowanson, Engineering Manager, Medium Voltage Drives
Yaskawa
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradley-schowanson-80655944/
Is your company pivoting at all during this pandemic and are there any initiatives you would like to share about what your company is doing differently either to assist in the fight against Covid-19 or generally how your leadership is handling the situation?
We are taking measures to isolate employees working at the factory as far as adjusting things like lunch shifts. We are also making sure the same group of employees on different lines are staying in the same areas and bathrooms. All office employees are working from home. My team and I are working from home and are using Go-to Meeting for all of our meetings. Our CEO’s goal has been to retain as many jobs as he can during this time, and I have been really happy with the choices he is making.
How are you keeping your employees and teams engaged and motivated?
For me, I talk to members of my team regularly on the phone and we have weekly meetings where we follow up, get together, and get updates of where we are at with projects. It helps a lot to talk and hear someone's voice. I personally listen to music to keep motivated while I work.
What message would you like to share with our industry as a whole in regards to the pandemic?
Overall, when I reflect on what’s going on, I think of how resilient humans are at overcoming obstacles like this. I'm sure we will overcome this, and I am proud of my team as well as Yaskawa as a whole for adapting to overcome general obstacles related to COVID-19.
Brian Clark, General Manager - Westfield, MA
Fastenal
Is your company pivoting at all during this pandemic and are there any initiatives you would like to share about what your company is doing differently either to assist in the fight against Covid-19 or generally how your leadership is handling the situation?
There are a bunch of different ways Fastenal is dealing with the current state. It all depends based on where exactly you are working and what kind of position you are in; whether in the warehouse or someone on the sales side. As a GM, our store, and other stores are taking everyone’s safety and health first. We have currently closed our front room, retail side of things. We are however, still servicing our customers while using hand sanitizer, masks and gloves as they are all essential workers either in government, transportation or in the medical field. From a business perspective, we have had to cut costs and be a bit more frugal, but luckily haven’t had to do anything throughout the company in terms of cutting hours or employees. There have been weekly updates throughout the company to keep employees informed on how we are dealing with COVID-19. For example, Fastenal has been making donations like dust masks to front line workers.
How are you keeping your employees and teams engaged and motivated?
I think for a lot of us, not much has changed in our business, but I would say knowing what’s going on in the world and the fact that we are helping supply people who are combatting the virus really keeps employees active, engaged and feeling like we are really making a difference. There's nothing putting them off about the situation. They all feel we are doing the right thing.
What message would you like to share with our industry as a whole in regards to the pandemic?
I like the fact that as an industry, we are able to come together to help the people on the front lines fight the virus and keep the world turning. There are people staying home to lessen the spread, but I'd like to see those that can make a difference get out there and do what they can to keep us afloat.
Tom Subaric, Plant Manager
Oakley Industrial Machinery
Is your company pivoting at all during this pandemic and are there any initiatives you would like to share about what your company is doing differently either to assist in the fight against Covid-19 or generally how your leadership is handling the situation?
Oakley Industrial Machinery makes equipment for the heater element industry. One thing we specifically make to assist the medical industry, especially right now during the COVID-19 pandemic, is machines that are used to manufacture heater blankets for emergency rooms. We are considered a necessary business during this time, and one thing we have done in order to keep all of our employees working we took a pay cut of 20% across the board, including our COO.
How are you keeping your employees and teams engaged and motivated?
The COVID-19 pandemic has made it hard to keep employees motivated at times; people are scared right now. We bought masks in the beginning for employees to wear to feel safer. Additionally, we have opened a second shift to create more spacing for our employees to be a safe distance from one another. We are doing the best we can do and are trying to keep employees proactive as much as we can.
What message would you like to share with our industry as a whole in regards to the pandemic?
The little things matter. Treat your people well, send care packages to first responders, and do whatever you can do for us to get through this.
Patrick Coakley, Regional Sales Manager
Plant Automation Group
Is your company pivoting at all during this pandemic and are there any initiatives you would like to share about what your company is doing differently either to assist in the fight against Covid-19 or generally how your leadership is handling the situation?
Our company, Plant Automation Group (PAG) is actually just as busy as we were before. Some clients have slowed, but few projects are on hold while some have picked up, as many are considered an essential manufacture. Many of these companies would rather look at automating facilities than hiring more employees at this time. We have also seen some manufacturers pivot to help support hand sanitizer applications which has been strong this last month. At PAG, we are always supporting automation requirements across a number of industries and within any segment of line automation.
How are you keeping your employees and teams engaged and motivated?
We don’t hire people who aren’t motivated, so our people are staying motivated through this as always. Since our sales and engineering teams need to be highly skilled across multiple platforms of equipment and combinations of industry segments, we have a unique talent of industry professionals. We are a smaller company and haven't had issues keeping employees engaged.
What message would you like to share with our industry as a whole in regards to the pandemic?
We sent an email to many of our clients on Friday and that message basically was to encourage them, if they have previous projects going on and they’re looking to expand automation requirements from a customer-based need, to do it now, be proactive and plan next steps for automation. If customers are not planning and waiting to see what happens, they will fall behind those who are already carrying out projects. Equipment will be out of stock, and lead times will increase. Our message was around those points, clients should push ahead in our opinion. We predict that the third and fourth quarter will be huge for the economy, and although some people have paused purchasing, they should not pause from reviewing projects. Manufactures need to be prepared when we come out of this shortly.
Anything else you would like to add:
This whole pandemic has shown us within the US that we have an issue, number one, our supply chain, but also that we are manufacturing too many products overseas, which we are seeing just in the pharmaceutical industry alone right now. Many companies assemble products in the US relying on third party suppliers, but they are not manufactured here. We need to bring that back to the United States and we have seen this happening in 2019. The pandemic has only reinforced the need.
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