Extensive Measures at AT&S

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The Styrian high-tech company AT&S has taken responsibility in the fight against the spread of the COVID-19 disease. The company has implemented preventive measures at its locations in Austria, even before the Federal Government’s regulations came into force. These measures now implemented in Austria have successfully been used over the past two and a half months in the Chinese AT&S plants. The aim of this is to protect employees best possible against the 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 valuable knowledge in dealing with the unusual situation. The success of the measures implemented in the Chinese AT&S locations is clearly 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.

Set of measures for AT&S Austria
“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. 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.

Precisely 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. AT&S was one of the first companies in China that was allowed to resume operations. In addition, Plant 1 in Chongqing was never affected by closures. “We consider the regulations adopted as a preventive measure by a responsible company,” says Andreas Gerstenmayer. “The primary goal of all steps is to ensure the safety of our employees and business partners and to keep the possible infection risk as low as possible. At the same time, we are doing everything we can to keep the business going and to meet our delivery obligations fully and on time. ”

All AT&S plants in China, Europe, Korea, India in full operation
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.