Life can return to a "new" normal.
Lessons from Germany, as discussed in today's WSJ:
Strict safety rules, testing and contact tracing enabled the country to do something that has eluded most other major developed economies: keep manufacturing running without suffering major outbreaks.
www.wsj.com
"MULFINGEN, Germany—When much of Europe’s economy shut down in mid-March, business kept right on going at Ebm-papst Group, a fan and motor manufacturer based near Germany’s Black Forest.
Throughout the six-week national lockdown that
now is gradually being lifted, the family-owned company kept its domestic factories running at 80% of normal capacity, said Chief Executive Officer Stefan Brandl.
Social distancing, ubiquitous face masks, in-house Covid-19 tests and contact-tracing when employees fell ill helped the company keep its plants open. Just 15 of its 6,700 employees in Germany have contracted the virus, the company said.
Large parts of Europe have been ravaged by the pandemic, but
Germany has fared better. While it has seen roughly the same number of diagnosed infections as similar-size neighbors—Italy, Spain, France, the U.K.—it has registered only about one-quarter as many deaths.
. . . .
German businesses also cite their presence in China, Germany’s largest trade partner, as an important factor in helping them prepare for the pandemic.
“Nearly everybody somehow is located in China,” said Thilo Brodtmann, executive director of the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association, or VDMA, which represents more than 3,000 companies.
. . . .
Ebm-papst, the fan and motor maker, has three factories in China. When the coronavirus began sweeping through that country, Thomas Nürnberger, the Shanghai-based head of the company’s China operation, called his colleagues to sound the alarm, giving them weeks to prepare before the virus made landfall in Europe. One of his first pieces of advice was for them to buy masks—as many as they could.
“We started trying to buy them all over the world,” said Tobias Arndt, the comany’s head of logistics. Mr. Brandl, the CEO, said the company now had one employee whose sole job is to source masks. It has a stockpile of more than 100,000 and is beginning to experiment with reusable ones.
. . . .
Like most German companies, Ebm-papst routinely involves employee representatives in management decisions—a tradition called co-determination. The head of personnel and a workers’ representative sit on the crisis task force."
. . . .
Paul Horn GmbH, a precision toolmaker based in Tübingen, has kept its three factories running continuously. The company, which makes machines used to build medical devices, cars, airplanes, wind turbines and other products, has shortened shifts, but it hasn’t furloughed any of its roughly 1,000 employees.
It, too, has a crisis group of management and workers that meets daily. The company has rearranged its canteen and workstations, and moved departments to different buildings to increase distance between workers. Employees work staggered shifts and wear mouth and nose protection, including its CEO, who wears a bandanna."
