Our Commitment to Safety as We Navigate COVID-19

Sumitomo Machinery Corporation of America remains Open for Business and committed to our employees, our customers, and our communities.

We’re closely monitoring the situation and following guidance from public health officials and government agencies, including the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. We would like to express our gratitude for all local, state, and federal officials, as well as those in health care who are all working diligently to contain the virus. As a result of recent government guidelines, we are taking immediate action to help mitigate the risk of spreading this virus.

April 24, 2020

Nearly six weeks after adapting to new federal and state guidelines, Sumitomo Machinery Corporation of America remains steadfast in our approach to navigating the Covid-19 pandemic. From past updates, we've provided many countermeasures taken to help curb the spread of the virus. These measures remain in place, and we continue to monitor the health and safety of our employees as it is our number one priority. To date, we have had no confirmed cases of Covid-19 in any of our facilities across North and South America, and all facilities, where governments allow, are operational. 
 
Our second priority during this pandemic is to ensure our customers, channel partners, economies, and countries remain operational. We recognize our gearboxes and gearmotors are essential to keep production running, be it in food production, parcel handling, or in the production of products such as toilet paper. During this unprecedented time, we've kept our supply chain intact, kept inventory levels high, and we are well-positioned to support our existing and future customers.

Our third priority is to support our local community. In the upcoming week's we're collaborating with a local non-profit to donate food and collect monetary donations.

We will continue to keep you updated on everything we're doing to keep our operations running as safely and smoothly as possible. Thank you for being a continued part of our Sumitomo family.

March 27, 2020

We remain Open for Business and committed to our employees, our customers, and our communities.

As everyone is aware, the Coronavirus situation continues to evolve daily. Since our last update seven days ago, we've seen volatility in the stock markets, unemployment rates skyrocketing, and widespread fear associated with the spread of the virus. We understand the gravity of the pandemic and continue to take every precaution possible to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees and our communities while keeping our many customers operational. 

We continue to follow the procedures we put in place on March 18th, and in the last week have implemented additional measures to safeguard our employees further. Also, to follow the best practices laid out by the CDC and WHO, we performed a deep clean of each common area in our shop. To date, we have had no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in any of our facilities across North and South America. We are incredibly grateful for the commitment our employees have to serve our customers and to keep our countries running. 

Through this time of tremendous uncertainty, we remain positive and steadfast in our approach to this crisis. As we have indicated in the past, we have a reliable supply chain, a robust stocking strategy, and a talented production and procurement team. We continue to build and ship products with little to no delay, and we will utilize all resources at our disposal for our customers' needs.

As is necessary, we will provide updates weekly if and when our situation changes. 

March 20, 2020

Given the recent actions from the Governor of California, we would like to provide an update on our Corona, CA operation.  As we have been preparing over these last two weeks, nearly all individuals who can work from home, are doing so. This includes many of our Customer Support Representatives and individuals responsible for Production Control, Purchasing, and any other administrative functions. We are still operational and are available to support each and every one of the businesses that keep our countries running strong.  

As companies like Sumitomo are vital to the critical infrastructure sectors as defined by the US government, we will make every effort to continue production in our Corona, CA facility, as well as each of our other locations in the Western Hemisphere. Our operations have continued without delay, and products continue to ship from our factories. While it is not “business as usual”, we are open for business.  We remain focused, taking every precaution necessary, and continue to leverage our large supply chain and diverse production capabilities around the world, to keep the world moving.

March 18, 2020

Effective immediately, all employees who have the ability to work remotely have been instructed to do so. Our factories continue to operate at full production but are taking the necessary precautions to ensure all employees who continue to work in one of our many facilities are well protected. These precautions include:

  • All non-critical or non-essential guests, vendors, or customers, will not be permitted to enter any of our facilities in the Western Hemisphere.
  • We are modifying our processes and operations to keep a safe distance at all times (6 feet). 
  • We have suspended non-essential travel, and our field sales engineers are respecting the wishes of their customers, and scaling back visits.
  • All large gatherings and non-essential meetings have been canceled or postponed.
  • In addition to our regular cleaning procedures, increased sanitization measures have been added to every facility.
  • For all employees, we continue to be flexible, continue to focus on prevention, and continue to encourage them to stay at home if they are not feeling well.

As a global company, we are closely monitoring our supply chain and taking every action to minimize disruption. Our current inventory levels remain strong, and our supply chain remains in-tact.  As our Asian factories have come back online after government restrictions have been lifted, we have begun to see operations normalize.  We expect this progress to continue as governments around the world work diligently to safeguard their people, contain the virus, and restart businesses. 

We understand the Coronavirus situation is top of mind for all of us right now. As a company critical to supporting those industries working to keep our economies operating, we are committed to persevering for their sake. As circumstances continue to change, our goal is and will continue to be to provide quality gearboxes worldwide and keep our employees safe and healthy.

Philip M. Zarate | Director of Marketing
Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of America
[email protected]
Tel: +1-757-485-8215