Responsible RestartOhio – What Does This Mean For Ohio Manufacturing? (MFGMonkey, Episode 9)

In Episode 9 of the MFGMonkey podcast, we dive into the latest updates from Ohio, discussing Governor DeWine’s Responsible Restart Ohio plan, focusing on the manufacturing and distribution sectors. We break down key points of the memo, including mandatory safety measures like social distancing, daily symptom assessments, and face coverings. We also share insights on shift patterns, physical workspace adjustments, and protocols for confirmed COVID-19 cases. Tune in as we navigate the nuances of safely reopening businesses while ensuring the well-being of employees and maintaining productivity. 

Source:

https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-y7ggt-…

Responsible RestartOhio

Manufacturing, Distribution, and Construction

https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/r…

Contact us at info@mfgmonkey.com

Employees, Distributors, & Guests

Mandatory

• Ensure a minimum of 6 ft between people, if not possible, install barriers
• Employees must perform daily symptom assessment*
• Require employees to stay home if symptomatic
• Face coverings must be worn at all times
• Require regular handwashing
• Stagger or limit arrivals of employees and guests
• Personnel should work from home if possible

Recommended Best Practices

• Provide stipend to employees for private transportation

Shift Pattern

• Daily disinfection of desks and workstations • Change shift patterns (e.g. fewer shifts) • Stagger lunch and break times

Recommended Best Practices

• Split into sub-teams, limit contact across sub-teams
• Reduce pace to allow less FTEs per line

Physical Spaces / Workstations

• Ensure a minimum of 6 ft between people, if not possible, install barriers 
• Daily deep disinfection of high-contact surfaces
• Space factory floor to allow for distancing
• Regulate the maximum number of people in cafeterias/ common spaces
• Establish maximum capacity (e.g. 50% of fire code)

Recommended Best Practices

• Close cafeteria and gathering spaces if possible, or conduct regular cleanings
• Daily deep disinfection of the entire facility

Confirmed Cases

• Immediately isolate and seek medical care for any individual who develops symptoms while at work
• Contact the local health district about suspected cases or exposures
• Shutdown shop/floor for deep sanitation if possible

Recommended Best Practices

• Work with the local health department to identify potentially infected or exposed individuals to help facilitate effective contact tracing/notifications
• Once testing is readily available, test all suspected infections or exposures
• Following testing, contact the local health department to initiate appropriate care and tracing

*Daily symptom assessments should include taking your temperature with a thermometer and monitoring for fever. Also, watch for coughing or trouble breathing.

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Responsible RestartOhio – What Does This Mean For Ohio Manufacturing? (MFGMonkey, Episode 9)

Manufacturing Monkeys. We are back for episode nine. I’m jumping on here alone for MFG Monkey. You can contact us at Info@MFGMonkey.com or visit our podcast at www.MFGMonkey.com. Just wanted to do a couple of quick updates today here in Ohio. Governor DeWine released an update. We’re going to get this launched pretty quickly and Luke is in the middle of finals and so forth. So no fancy introduction, no music, all that fun stuff because I think it’s more important to get this out than to mess around with any of that stuff. 

Again, today, April 28, 2020. I believe, and the first memo came out for Ohio getting back to work.  Governor DeWine has dubbed this as Responsible Restart Ohio for the section that we’re going to go over obviously is manufacturing, distribution, and construction. There’s a part of this for each sector of business and we’re going to go over the manufacturing and distribution piece. 

A couple of key things we’re going to go through this document and we’ll have a link to the direct document that you can get on and read yourself. We’re just going to go over a brief overview of it quickly. It’s broken down into a couple of different sections, employee distributors and guests, a mandatory section, a shift pattern, physical space and work stations, confirmed cases, and then a daily symptom and assessment and so forth. 

Quickly, just to go over each section of this release. Under the mandatory section, again, ensure a minimum of six feet between people if not possible, install barriers, employees must perform daily symptom assessments, require employees to stay home if they have symptoms, and face coverings must be worn at all times, require regular hand washing, stagger or limit arrivals of employees and guests, people should work from home if possible. 

Under the mandatory section, this is a lot of the same items that all the essential manufacturers have been adhering to already. There may be a couple of new ones with the face coverings mandatory now. I think for a while it was just suggested. The reason for the face coverings from what I understand is this virus is transferred through droplets from saliva, talking and coughing, and just everyday interaction. The virus lives on surfaces and so forth. 

If somebody is talking or coughing around metal in your shop or at a desk and somebody else comes along and touches it and then touches their face, that’s how this virus is spreading. The numbers that we’re seeing are dramatically lower than what originally was estimated, which is a phenomenal thing. 

Under the mandatory section, there’s a recommended best practice, provide a stipend to employees for private transportation. Not sure if that applies to a whole lot of folks who are reading. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I think most of our folks are driving themselves here in Ohio, may have some folks that are doing share riding and so forth. 

Next up is under shift pattern, daily disinfection of desks, and workstations, and change shift patterns. For example, fewer shifts, staggered lunches, and breaks. Again, just common sense, making sure that we have plenty of separation between people and doing our best for social distancing within the workplace. Recommended best practices under shift patterns, split into sub-teams, limit contact across sub-teams, reduce the pace to allow less per line, just lessen the interaction on lines, and so forth. It’s not going to be quite as productive but again, this is all about worker safety. 

Under physical spaces and workstations, this is probably going to be something very unique. We’ve seen it if anyone has been out and gone to the grocery or Lowe’s or Home Depot or anything like that, ensure a minimum of six feet of separation, if not possible, install barriers. I’ve seen some pretty unique things. I’ve dropped a couple of packages off to UPS and there’s a clear shower curtain up.

They did a fairly decent job making it look as professional as possible. I’m sure that there are some sign makers and so forth out there. If any of you guys are reading and want to chime in or offer your services, feel free to do that. Email us at Info@MFGMonkey.com and we can kick your information out there to help everyone out. 

Daily deep disinfection of high contact surfaces, space factory floor to allow for disinfecting. Physical spaces, workstations, a lot about just disinfecting and separation. Regulate max number of people in cafeterias and common spaces. Establish a maximum capacity of 50% per fire code. A lot of common sense there. Recommended best practices under physical space. Close cafeteria and gathering spaces if possible or conduct regular cleanings. Daily deep disinfection. A lot of repetitiveness there. 

Confirm cases per this memo. Immediately isolate or this is confirmed cases within your shop. If you learn that there’s a confirmed case of China virus in your shop, you’re wanting to immediately isolate and seek medical care for any individual who develops symptoms while at work. Contact a local health district about a suspected case or exposure. Shut down the shop floor or for deep sanitation if possible.

Mandatory Section 

Under this for recommended best practices. Work with the local health department to identify potentially infected or exposed individuals. Once tested, testing is readily available. Test all suspected infections or exposures. I would be very interested to hear how the tests are coming along. I know, one of our shops, Springfield Spring, they were in contract to make a wire form for a very large company and it came out to 10,000.

They were, geez, I want to say that the numbers were processing 10,000 pounds of material a day for a very small wire forming and then the number was in the tens of millions for creating this. Just very interested in how all this is going to work and the progression of what kind of testing is out there. This company wasn’t even sure what the future was going to hold for these tests. 

It was very invasive testing, but from what we’ve read, some things on the market are coming out that you can literally spit in a tube and it could give you your test results fairly quickly. That’s a very interesting topic, especially in the manufacturing world, how those tests are going to be manufactured, and who’s going to manufacture them. Then more importantly, whoever develops this, what kind of support they’re getting, and how many manufacturers out there are going to be able to help. Following tests, contact local authorities, and make sure that they know. 

Daily symptoms and assessments should include taking your temperature with a thermometer and monitoring for fever. Also, watch for coughing and trouble breathing. A lot of the same information that we’ve already been privy to and that we’ve all been reading and seeing on the news, there’s nothing new here. 

Closed Industries

It’s the first step of actually getting back to work. There’s plenty of industry that is not going to open back up, and continue to close, specifically here in Ohio, schools and daycares, which we all knew that the schools were done for this year. I think Dublin Coffman is going to hold their graduation in late July, hopefully for those seniors. 

I know, my son’s looking forward to going through the ceremony and all of his buddies. Dine-in restaurants and bars will still stay closed. Carry-out is still permitted. Personal appearance and beauty businesses. For all of us that badly need a haircut, still, those places are going to stay close. Just way too close personal interaction there. 

What else? Older adult daycare services and senior centers, adult day support, vocational rehabilitation services, groups and group settings, entertainment, recreation, and gyms.  Those are the businesses that are going to continue to stay closed. They, I’m reading through this quickly. It does not look like there is a potential opening date. 

I know all my friends that are in healthcare or, in cutting hair and things like that, but it’s still very unclear when those things are going to start opening up. There are some other dates in here. Let’s look at this real quick. Beginning May 4, 2020. Manufacturing, distribution, and construction businesses may reopen. I know a lot of those businesses already stayed open because they were deemed essential.

Beginning May 4th, general office environments may reopen if these businesses can meet mandatory safety requirements. Again, a lot of the in-office folks who can stay working from home are going to continue working from home. I have had multiple conversations with different folks, I think that this is going to be a new wave.

We work a lot from home. We have an office and not many folks are in the office working and I know that it’s just going to continue that way. There was a big push in the last year or two that a lot of folks were working from home and there’s not a need to go into the office every day. I think when Zoom launched, I forget what Mike told us, our IT guy, that they were expecting six or 10 million users, and then all of a sudden there were many times the number of users that Zoom expected. 

Some issues work through there and we’ve been using it. We’re really happy with it. It’s been a good way to communicate and still stay face-to-face. Let’s see, beginning May 12th, 2020, consumer-related and services may reopen if these businesses can meet mandatory requirements, require face coverings, conduct daily health assessments, clean and sanitize. A lot of the same.

I’m curious as to what is going to fall under the consumer and retail services that are going to open back up that have been closed because there were a lot of consumer and retail services out there that have stayed open. The Lowe’s and grocery stores and other small shops and so forth. Maybe it’s the smaller, smaller shops. I’m sure that there are categories for what was deemed essential and what wasn’t.

This is pretty vague. I know that what we were mainly interested in was the manufacturing piece. A lot of manufacturers stayed open. I don’t know how this is going to change for a lot of manufacturers that we have been working with directly because again, a lot of them were deemed essential. Supporting government contracts and things like that. 

I’m not sure how that’s going to change a whole lot for the manufacturing world with the essential components. The mandatory piece with the face coverings and things like that. It’ll just be interesting to see how that’s supported. It’ll make a big difference for much larger companies like the Hondas of the world and other supporting manufacturers for the car industry that completely just shut down and went into big furloughs and things like that. 

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the big bounce back and the V-shaped curve that we all want to see coming back and to get more of those 26 million people who have lost their jobs over the last couple of months here in the U.S. Went from very low unemployment rate to an extremely high unemployment rate very quickly.

A lot of unknowns out there still, just wanted to jump on quickly and give everyone an update that may not have received the email or have heard in another place. Again, reach out to us, and let us know what you want to hear about. We have a couple of other podcasts coming up that are scheduled and we have an update that’s waiting to be loaded.

I hope it launches this Friday, May 1st, 2020, episode 6.3, just following up on the PPP loan and we dive into tracking the funds that you’re getting and how to prepare for the forgiveness piece of that. One that you want to listen to and absorb. We have our good friend and attorney back on there that you guys heard on the other, on the other podcast, very informative. Does just a wonderful job of walking through and giving us updates through the memo and giving us some insight from an attorney’s point of view. Jordan Butler just did an amazing job. We were fortunate to have him on here and talk through it. 

Again, if anyone has any questions at all for Jordan, feel free to email us, get on, share this, and let us know what you think, what you like, and what you dislike. Appreciate your time. Very short and dirty one, 17 minutes and counting. Jump off here and let everyone get back at it. Thanks again for listening to me, Dustin McMillan at MFG Monkey. Talk to everyone soon.