RCM Industries: “Planning early for a worst-case state of affairs helped us later”
RCM Industries is a producer of die casting components with 4 manufacturing crops within the Chicago space. The corporate’s director of gross sales and advertising and marketing, Mike Higgins, spoke with us about how RCM is managing the COVID-19 disaster.
**Inform us the way you run your manufacturing in the present day vs. earlier than the pandemic.**All our 4 crops have been considerably impacted by the pandemic—our operations are down 50-80 % proper now. Luckily, a number of of our prospects that we manufacture components for are for merchandise deemed “important,” comparable to components for the medical, navy and automotive industries, so so far as conserving some employees employed, we’re nonetheless higher off than many different companies in our space that needed to shut down fully.
**How are you defending your workers? What sorts of PPE are they carrying (if deemed essential)? Did it’s important to restructure your manufacturing line to attenuate contagion dangers?**We’re principally working a skeleton crew on-site at our crops proper now. All people that may work at home is doing so. All on-site personnel put on masks and gloves and/or use hand sanitizers.
We really did have a COVID-19 case in considered one of our crops that we instantly shut down for per week. Throughout that point, we had knowledgeable firm are available and fully sanitize the place earlier than we had our workers report again to work. Early on, we laid out very clear insurance policies on what to do ought to this occur. These insurance policies have been shared with our suppliers, our workers, and our prospects, so when it occurred, we have been ready and adopted via with what we had stated we’d do. I believe this actually helped all stakeholders.
Our UR cobots are deployed in two identical cells the place they every have a tendency two dual-spindle CNC lathes in the identical cycle. By way of following the social distancing pointers, this has additionally confirmed very efficient as we solely want one roving inspector to supervise the operation of those cells now.
