Dear Jain Irrigation Customers, Associates, Suppliers, and Stakeholders:
I hope this letter finds you all well and safe!
By now, you may have seen many updates , e-mails, or social media postings with regards to businesses’ actions with regards to COVID-19. The news we are bombarded with hourly seems fairly depressing for even the most ardent optimists. We are all faced with state of emergency declarations, school closures, ‘shelter in place’ requests, shopping challenges, stock market volatility and declines, along with prospects of a potential recession.
In light of our current reality, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of the Jain Irrigation Associates – for their dedication, commitment, and hard work in servicing our customers.
I also want to thank our experienced leadership team for guiding our company through these challenging times. Our leaders have previously navigated some challenging business environments and I am confident we’ll come through again for our stakeholders.
Jain is concerned about the spread of the coronavirus (COVID19) and its impact on employee health, associated business, and supply chain. As a company, we performed a risk assessment and discussed vulnerabilities. Below are critical actions we are taking to reduce employee, customer, and vendor exposure:
- We completed awareness training with all our employees on what the coronavirus is, what the symptoms are, how it spreads, and precautions they can take to protect themselves, their co-workers, and the
- We performed a refresher training on Good Manufacturing Practices and proper handwashing.
- We have sanitizers available throughout the production floor, lunchrooms and
- We require employees to stay home if they are sick or if they need to take care of a family member that is
- We are prepared for possible increased numbers of employee absences due to illness in employees and their family members, closures of schools, daycares, and other
- We restricted travel to only essential needs and prohibited air travel through to April 1st.
- Every employee who can work from home will be by 3/29/20.
- We have minimized meetings and encourage more virtual meetings, reduced group interactions in common areas, and are providing frequent cleaning of shared spaces and frequently touched surfaces.
With regards to our supply chain, we remain ready and capable of supplying irrigation systems and equipment. Already this year the Jain supply chain leaders have managed through increased customer demand due to growth and favorable weather for irrigation installations, along with resin supply/price volatility and component supply challenges from some international partners. In many cases, there exists redundant capacities in the USA or outside and despite the global issues, we have not had significant supply disruptions. The situation is fluid with regards to airline and container availability for our international components which are utilized to a smaller percent of our overall business. If we expect supply difficulties, we’ll do our best to provide as much notice as possible and find alternatives for our customers.
Steps we have taken to minimize the impact on our supply chain and production are:
- We have stock in our USA manufacturing and distribution warehouses to cover the immediate needs of our
- We have plans in place to continue essential business functions in case of higher than usual
- Employees are cross-trained to perform essential functions, so the workplace can operate even if key staff members are
- We have identified federal, state, and local health resources so that timely and accurate information can guide appropriate responses in each location where our operations
Thanks to our customers and suppliers as we close out our fiscal 2020 year (on 3/31/2020). If there is anything our leadership can do to help you navigate the current environment – we are here for you.
Sincerely,
Aric Olson
President, Jain Irrigation, Inc.
