WILTON, CT – Priests and experts have promised their flocks that they will “go through this pandemic and be more powerful than before” for months. But a Wilton manufacturer has been doing this since March, and there’s never been one in his calculations.
At its Wilton facility, Dutch manufacturer ASML manufactures the devices that semiconductor companies want to create microchips. As such, staff were considered “essential” when the coronavirus pandemic erupted. The plant employs 1900 people and sent home 1200 people.
This was a radical replacement for the company, according to Bill Amalfitano, vice president of ASML’s Wilton plant. The thought in the production industry has been that each and every worker should be available, whether they are spending their shift at the factory or in an office.
“We run a lot in combination and want to be there to support,” Amalfitano said. It was such institutional trust that the company didn’t even have a house painting policy.
To facilitate the new philosophy, ASML has allowed workers to disconnect their comfortable chairs and large screen monitors to give them all the benefits of the workplace at home. They implemented Microsoft Teams for communications, and this also turned out to be a revelation.
“Now other people communicate more at those team meetings than just sit next to each other and not communicate,” Amalfitano said.
For the 3 groups of 700 employees who continued to perform on the day of the facility, the company began to do everything possible.
Management established a crisis team, which isolated the 3 production shifts per day, making sure there was no contact or overlap between staff at each shift. The company introduced temperature controls in early March, before they were required by the state, and also limited exit and access points. On-site visitors were limited to those who were “critical to the company,” and even interviews with new applicants from the developing company were conducted remotely. (Some new workers were hired “unseen,” according to Amalfitano.) ASML has started offering loose packaged lunches to its workers in their workspaces so they don’t want to meet in the cafeteria. Door buttons have become contactless access points, and even a mask protocol has been adopted, all before state mandates make them the new standard.
As prophetic as it may seem, this resolution would have been difficult to sell in March for top CFOs. Second, masks were a rare and expensive good, and even national public fitness agencies were unsure that they would be very useful in the face of coronavirus.
“We bought a huge amount, a hundred thousand masks, on our first purchase,” Amalfitano said. The company made sure to buy enough to be able to supply 10 loose masks to all its workers for domestic use, “because they could not be purchased at that time”.
When the virus eventually became fatal in the area, the first Connecticut patients to succumb to COVID-19 were Wilton residents. It’s a dark difference and unsettling data that took over the network for weeks.
“Horrible April, ” said Amalfitano. “If you turn on a TV in this area … the number of new cases, the number of deaths … the constant ‘Stay home! Stay home!’ everyone panicked.”
This has made the paintings of the ASML crisis team even more difficult. Communication is of paramount importance due to fear, which has spread so much and even faster than the virus.
“I still had disorders with other people who felt very nervous and didn’t need to come to work,” Amalfitano said. “And then their absenteeism rate would be higher than normal, just because other people were so scared.”
As a result, the company began publishing a daily newsletter explaining the steps it is taking to mitigate the office’s threats and risks. Employee feedback sessions were held twice a month. The initial concern gave way to an appreciation of the promises the company was putting into practice. Soon, this workforce, who was afraid to show up, did not have to leave.
“Now, when you communicate with our workers, and I do it all the time, other people feel safer at home than anywhere else,” Amalfitano said.
Fortunately, too, because while many other corporations and competition were considered fortunate to keep their doors open during the pandemic, ASML was in the midst of a period of expansion. Production reached record levels in April and the company has leased nearly a hundred new workers since the start of the pandemic (and plans to rent about 60 more).
As a complicated challenge, it was able to keep everyone satisfied and focused on the factory, it was an order of magnitude less difficult than keeping ASML suppliers and consumers informed. A factory is as strong as its source chain, and weak links have begun to appear in ASML, state governors have begun calling for the closure of companies. Amalfitano stated that some of its suppliers are reminded that, while ASML was a must-have business, one of its main suppliers was also a must and remained open.
Customers presented another set of problems. The ASML product line of excessive ultraviolet lithography devices is as confusing as it seems. When those machines fail, they exceed the repair capacity of Maytag’s local repairman. Therefore, the company transported one of its engineers to the customer’s site for repair. The virus founded this operation.
Unable to send engineers, the manufacturer began shipping glasses. The HoloLens, manufactured through Microsoft, are combined real glasses that have allowed Wilton ASML technicians to look over the shoulders of their cushioned consumers anywhere in the world. Once the challenge is diagnosed, the ASML technician can write a service plan that solves it and overlay this holographic diagram on the remote technician’s vision box at the site.
Not only was it an exceptionally sublime solution, but it can also be a roadmap for the future. No much expensive as the real glasses combined, they are a cheaper solution than the TRAVEL store.
“Many kinds of kinds have been learned from this pandemic,” Amalfitano said. “And when you get out of the pandemic, you’re not going to abandon them.”
To this end, ASML human resources scribes have been busy drafting a painting policy from home that will continue after the pandemic. The management’s long-standing assumption that painters can also paint with their blurry socks has officially changed.
“We detect that they are more effective,” Amalfitano said.
The good fortune and expansion of Wilton’s ASML plant is reflected in the company’s monetary results. The company’s second quarter profit is 3.3 billion euros, a staggering expansion of more than 35% compared to the first quarter. The Financial Times ranked it 25th on a list of a hundred companies that thrived during the pandemic.
Patch is a network news area. Please keep your answers clear, kind and objective. Read our network rules here
Loading…