For The Tribune
Cummins Inc. has announced it will change shift patterns and reduce hours for employees at three local manufacturing facilities starting Monday primarily due to Gov. Eric Holcomb’s statewide stay-at-home order.
The stay-at-home order, which bans nonessential travel by Hoosiers for two weeks, started Wednesday and runs through April 7 and aims to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the state, Holcomb said Monday.
The impacted facilities include Cummins Fuel Systems Plant and Cummins Engine Plant in Columbus and Cummins Seymour Engine Plant, said President and Chief Operating Officer Tony Satterthwaite.
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At the Seymour Engine Plant, the company will be spreading out the work over seven days to reduce the number of people who are on site at any given time, said company spokesman Jon Mills.
At the Columbus Engine Plant, the heavy-duty machining business will alternate manufacturing lines on a weekly basis to reduce the number of employees in the facility at one time. The two teams that run LDD lines also will alternate work weeks.
At the Columbus Fuel Systems Plant, the company will reduce the workforce present on site at one time by about 50%, Mills said.
Cummins also has reduced workforce hours or shifts at its technical centers, warehouses and service locations.
Cummins is not laying off employees locally at this time, Mills said.
“The governor’s lockdown order is for two weeks,” Satterthwaite said. “If Indiana lifts the lockdown order, we would go back to a more normal shift pattern. We’re just trying to respond and respect what the governor is trying to do in terms of flattening the curve. We expect this will last for some period of time as long as the government keeps the lockdown order in place.”
Satterthwaite said Cummins employees in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 but declined to provide more details, citing privacy laws.
Company officials said the company has had “very few cases” of the virus among employees, and none of the employees are believed to have been infected or transmitted the virus while at a Cummins facility.
“We are tracking (cases), and we have had some employees test positive,” Satterthwaite said. “We have a specific and strict protocol for a facility if an employee has tested positive in that facility. We immediately cordon off the area. The area undergoes a deep and significant cleaning, and then we track that employee’s contacts and talk with the people who have engaged with that employee and let them know and that they are now technically exposed, and then we have advice for them.”
Cummins officials also said the company is taking measures to make its facilities as clean and safe and as low risk for transmission of COVID-19 as possible.
Cummins has implemented employee health screenings before they enter a manufacturing facility, Satterthwaite said. Currently, employees are asked a series of questions to assess an employee’s risk of being infected with the virus before they can enter.
“Sometime in the future, we will be adding temperature screenings to those questions, as well, in order to enter a Cummins facility,” Satterthwaite said.
Additionally, Cummins has increased the frequency at which facilities are cleaned and disinfected, reallocating cleaning crews to manufacturing facilities who were previously assigned to office facilities where most employees are working from home, Satterthwaite said.
Cummins also implemented social distancing at its manufacturing facilities by moving people around on production lines and staggering shifts.
“We’re trying to make sure that Cummins facilities are as free from the virus as possible so employees can come to work and not worry about the risk of transmission while they’re in the factories,” Satterthwaite said.