AT&S implements preventive measures at all Austrian sites

The aim of this is to protect employees best possible against the COVID-19 (also know as SARS-CoV-2) virus and, on the other hand, to maintain ongoing operations in order to secure jobs. AT&S draws on the experiences from China, where the company has gained knowledge in dealing with the unusual situation. The success of the measures implemented in the Chinese AT&S locations is quite visible: the three AT&S plants in Shanghai and Chongqing have been back in full operation for a couple of days now and continue to produce, with the exception of brief interruptions. “We decided to take strict measures at our Austrian locations and – within the scope of our options – to make a contribution to coping with this situation,” says AT&S CEO Andreas Gerstenmayer, in a press release. At the AT&S locations in Leoben and Fehring, among other things, it is now mandatory to wear respirator masks on the company premises, the home office regulations were extensively expanded, the canteen operation was restricted and business travel was stopped. To regularly inform all employees, a separate info point was created on the AT&S intranet and a separate telephone hotline was set up for all questions of the workforce. The measures that AT&S has now implemented in the Austrian locations have been successfully applied in the plants in China in the past two and a half months and have ensured that no COVID-19 infections have been diagnosed there, the company states. All AT&S locations in Europe and Asia are currently 100% available; there are no restrictions on order processing. The same applies to the supply of the required production materials. In this context, AT&S is also working intensively on increasing safety stocks. At AT&S, it is currently assumed that the measures taken will be maintained for at least one to two months in order to ensure, as in China, that the spread of the coronavirus is sustainably contained and that ongoing operations can be guaranteed. While the number of new infections in Europe continues to move upwards, a sharply declining trend can be seen in China. All three AT&S plants in Shanghai and Chongqing are in full operation, and after the quarantine measures of the past few weeks, the number of employees at the two AT&S locations has now returned to normal levels.