Kevin Kelly has discovered the many ways a deadly pandemic can be both a boom and a burden on some U.S. businesses.
As the nation clamped down with stay-at-home orders, Kelly said his company, Emerald Packaging Inc. in Union City, Calif, saw demand for the factory’s output explode. Emerald churns out plastic bags for produce, like baby carrots and iceberg lettuce, and Kelly attributed the growth, in part, to the perception that packaged produce is a safer alternative to unwrapped items.
Schnur said the extra costs go beyond stepped up cleaning and safety equipment and includes “significant increases in supply chain and logistics costs as we work to get our materials to those who have the greatest need.” One of the biggest costs for Emerald was $50,000 Kelly spent on an automated temperature scanner. When the crisis first hit, Emerald implemented a regimen that included workers getting their temperature taken at the start and end of each shift.
The new system will be a scanner that flashes a red warning signal if someone walks by with a body temperature over 100.4 degrees. Michael Rincon, Emerald’s director of operations, says each week brings new twists. For instance, they’ve discovered that having workers constantly wiping surfaces with isopropyl alcohol erodes signs and buttons — but they only realized that after it was too late. On one machine in the factory, the word “danger” printed in bright red has blurred.
Besides the costs, there are also plenty of unpredictable management challenges. The company made masks mandatory eight weeks ago, at the very beginning of the crisis, but Kelly and other managers still find workers in the plant who aren’t wearing them or are wearing them incorrectly.One problem is the nature of their factory, which is dominated by large, noisy machines. The only way to communicate in many parts of the factory is to lean your head right next to your coworker.
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