As the coronavirus crisis was unfolding in China in the run-up to the Chinese lunar New Year on January 23, Tenaris’s facility in Qingdao became the first in the Tenaris industrial network to introduce mandatory temperature scans, restrict employee gatherings, map out workstations to enforce social distancing and disinfect high-risk areas at least four times per day.
The lockdown implemented by the Chinese government and actions taken by individual companies appear to have paid off, as previously scaled back operations in Qingdao return to normal, while offering hope to other regions that they too can turn the corner. “We learned a lot from the experience of our team in China, with their ideas on prevention, mitigation and crisis management now duplicated at our plants and offices around the world,” says Antonio Caprera, Tenaris Chief Industrial Officer. “And while the crisis is not over, today our Qingdao facility is running at full capacity, while keeping in place all the preventive measures.”
Meanwhile, Tenaris’s supply chain organization quickly mobilized to address disruption in global transportation and logistics to safeguard essential deliveries to customers. It also led the project to procure and deliver over 46,000 medical-grade face masks to be distributed to employees and donated to first responders, medical staff, police officers and social welfare workers in Qingdao.
“The coronavirus crisis poses enormous challenges,” points out Philix Liu, Tenaris Managing Director in China. “But it has also given our team the opportunity to test emergency response, execution capability, customer support, reliability of supply chains and crisis communication. The new reality underscores the critical importance of these areas to our operations worldwide.”
To learn about Tenaris’s management plan to address the COVID-19 crisis, please visit https://www.tenaris.com/en/covid19/
For more information, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.