Written 8 April 2020
As we are sure you are aware, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a challenging and quickly evolving situation that has impacted the ability of businesses around the world to maintain operations. We continue to monitor the health and wellbeing of our workforce along with our supply chain and as always are committed to our customers, doing our utmost to minimise any potential impact. We would like to share with you an update to the actions we are taking and the current status of our supply chain.
AHU
Our factory in the UK (Cramlington) is working at normal capacity with onsite measures in place to ensure social distancing and hygiene is followed.
Some of our supply chain have temporarily shut, however we have components in store to continue manufacture and our procurement department is in regular contact with the factories and suppliers, checking on reopening, lead times and looking at alternative sourcing if required.
We have seen many construction sites closing for a period of time to assess situation with planned shipments to site being cancelled until further notice. Our projects team will coordinate on existing orders to try to limit the impact of lead times and cancelled deliveries. Dependent on unit configuration this will dictate current lead times although our factory team are fully available to support and provide the best possible solution.
CHILLER
The latest official communication from the Italian Government is the lockdown has been extended until 13th April, continuing the shutdown of our Chiller (Cecchina) factory. Despite this lockdown extension, the local authority has confirmed the possibility to open our Cecchina factory with limited capacity, allowing us to be able to restart production on Tuesday April 7th. This production is aimed at critical units with materials already available, with full production planned to restart from 13th April. We are in full dialogue with our suppliers to understand their possibilities to restart delivery, with a positive response assuring our production capabilities moving forward.
For existing orders our projects teams will be in communication with all clients advising on any impact on deliveries, however if your site is shut please advise so unnecessary shipment can be avoided.
DAIKIN APPLIED SERVICE
Our service team continue to support sites with ongoing maintenance, where permitted and emergency reactive call outs as required. There has been no reduction in workforce as our in-field engineers are generally lone workers. This has been supplemented with the support of Daikin On Site – remote monitoring to reduce onsite presence and ensure quicker response times.
SPARES
We continue to hold good stocks of spare parts in the UK, whilst spares from Italy are currently restricted due to lockdown extension. We purchase spare parts and materials across a range of suppliers also in the UK, with limited impact on spares availability for common components, lead time for individual items can be confirmed on request.
COVID-19 SUPPORT
We are seeing an increase in hospital related enquiries in relation to COVID-19 response across AHU, Chiller and Service businesses. It is extremely important that any urgent COVID-19 enquiry / order is highlighted with the product requirements and delivery needs, so that we can action as soon as possible and work with our supply chain to give the best possible response and lead times.
We remain committed to supporting our customer needs during these difficult times and by working together we will minimise disruption. We are constantly monitoring the situation as it evolves and we will keep you, our customers, informed with ongoing updates as appropriate.
DOWNLOADS
Daikin Applied UK – Coronavirus Customer Update – 6 Apr 20 – Rev 01
