Protolabs 'well positioned' to weather coronavirus disruption

Protolabs is ‘well positioned’ to assist its customers during the coronavirus pandemic, and weather the disruption it brings according to Bjoern Klaas, vice president and managing director EMEA.

In a statement, Klaas highlights the company’s manufacturing and ordering process as areas where the company is equipped to deal with the current world health situation.

His full statement said:

“As a world leading digital manufacturer we are monitoring and preparing for the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The nature of the outbreak is continuing to evolve and our sympathies go to all those affected. We are already working with Government authorities and organisations across Europe to assist in the manufacture of critical components to support the effort to combat the disease which is impacting society. 

“Protolabs is well positioned to weather this type of disruption while assisting our customers through their own supply chain disruptions. This is because of our digital end-to-end manufacturing processes. Our customer ordering process is ecommerce-based, requiring no direct human contact, but where contact is requested by our customers it is done via email and/or phone. Our manufacturing processes are digital, and while we do need people in our facilities to operate, we require significantly fewer operators than any other type of manufacturing. 

“All our manufacturing facilities remain fully operational and in order to protect our employees we have also implemented a number of internal initiatives to delay potential infection of our people by applying travel restrictions, enforcing social distancing, focussing on hygiene measures, following quarantine advice and allowing working from home to avoid short falls in our workforce.

“We operate our manufacturing facilities from across Europe, so enabling us to balance production across multiple sites. As for our supply chain we primarily use widely available metals and plastics that can be sourced from multiple suppliers both domestically and internationally. The Protolabs supply chain is well prepared with our dynamic risk-based management structure to help ensure business continuity throughout our supply base. We have intentionally injected redundancies into our supply chain so as to create contingency relationships with alternative supplies within dispersed geographic regions. This helps avoid supply chain risks for all our customers. 

“We are aware of the interconnectedness of the global economy but our supply chain is well prepared to respond appropriately. Protolabs will continue to monitor our resources and dependencies to help ensure a consistent experience to all our customers. With our dynamic risk-based management framework, Protolabs is not currently adversely affected and in fact is already working with many customers to help them face their own challenges within their global supply chains.”