Okmetic’s operations are stable despite globally worsening COVID-19 situation

Okmetic assesses the COVID-19’s effect on the company’s wafer supply, raw material availability, personnel etc. on a daily basis as part of its Business Continuity Planning. Okmetic production lines have been in full operation and there have been no major problems related to COVID-19. Below you can find updated risk analysis regarding the most important factors related to Okmetic’s Business Continuity:

Personnel

Okmetic is making several efforts to secure the health of its employees and sufficient amount of employees at all situations. Last week the amount of self-reported sick leaves was slightly on the rise just as it should be in this situation. Okmetic has given health care guidance to prepare its employees for a possible infection and instructed people stay home if having slightest flu symptoms, actions of which are in an important role to prevent the spread of the virus. All possible white-collar employees continue to work remotely at all Okmetic offices and enhanced cleaning of Vantaa site premises is done to prevent the spread of the virus among blue-collar employees. There are also special seating arrangements at the Okmetic personnel restaurant to minimize contact between employees and lunch is being served by the caterer instead of having a lunch buffet.

The Finnish government’s restrictions for free moving of people have been in force for a few weeks now to minimize the spread of the virus. This week has shown that these restrictions have had a clear impact on the level of new infections in Finland.

Okmetic is well prepared for the spread of the virus among its personnel. If efficiency of Okmetic seems to be compromised due to shortage of workforce, Okmetic will apply work time solutions such as overtime work and use trained hourly workers, summer workers and students and internal resources as well as start aggressive recruitment and speeded training of new employees.  

Raw materials:

The situation regarding raw materials and production articles is good.  There has been some availability problems with certain raw materials and production articles. Okmetic has many months stock of all materials and the company has been able to source alternative materials for the needs of upcoming months. COVID-19’s effect on materials has been small and has not caused any interruptions to our operations.

Equipment:

At the moment COVID-19’s effect on equipment has been minimal and hasn’t had negative effect on our capacity. The assembly of some new equipment have been postponed and in the future also equipment supplier support could be affected.

Logistics

The rapidly spreading pandemic and increasing national restrictions definitely have their effects on global logistics. Keeping standard transit times becomes ever more challenging despite best efforts. Okmetic continues to co-operate with its forwarder partners to secure sufficient amount of freight capacity at all situations and has also started to apply early shipment procedure as a preliminary precaution whenever possible.

We are doing everything we can to minimize the risk of COVID-19 affecting our Business Continuity by following the situation and its development closely and making necessary changes and back-up plans for different scenarios. Currently the situation is good and the effects on our production have been minimal.