Global Pandemic. Lockdown. Stay Home. At the beginning of 2020, these things belonged in science fiction movies and none of us had ever considered that we could experience them during our lifetime. But the pandemic raised an important question on how we ensure business continuity in challenging times to be able to operate “business as usual” for our customers.

Technology as a facilitator

Technology is, of course, a big factor for us at Feed4ward but so is culture and teamwork. Being automation engineers, we are naturally technophiles and we relish using technology to make our work lives efficient and effective. Even before the lockdown we had already introduced a GAMP5-compliant system of secure electronic signatures in PDFs for approval of our documentation, meaning no more posting of documents around the world for clients’ “wet” signatures. Our servers had remote access and we host our own Private Cloud to share documents with clients.

In addition, our RedMine project management system is web-accessible to all our engineers. Also self-hosted for security, this provides an instant status view of all projects in progress. So our team already had access to all the IT tools they needed. We were even using Slack both for one-to-one chat and for group communication, and we quickly added Zoom for video conferencing.

Building team spirits

The technology was all in place, but what about the human aspects of remote working? After the initial novelty of working from home, feelings of isolation can be a problem for even the most focused workers. And for those with young families, inquisitive pets or no spare room it can be a real challenge. To help with this during the lockdown we used flexible working, social Zoom rooms, sharing of humour via our #random Slack channel. Plus occasional staff treats such as surprise snack boxes delivered directly to people’s homes. Regular communication is even more important than usual when working remotely so we had daily catch-ups as a matter of routine, not just because we needed a “project meeting”.

Maintaining premises

Of course some things will always need a physical presence. So to continue with our workshop panel-build, goods-in etc. we maintained and manned our premises with minimal personnel to avoid any interruption to our customer deliveries. And keeping office-based staff included in the on-line communications with Slack and Zoom integrates home and office work. Keeping the workshop active also enables us to ship physical equipment (such as PLCs and tools for testing) to engineers’ homes where necessary, returning them to the workshop by courier when the task was complete. 

As we look back on impact of the first peak of COVID-19 from March 2020, we can reflect that during the lockdown we at Feed4ward really did continue to operate ‘business-as-usual’. Appropriate use of technology, established processes and a great team with a can-do attitude allowed us to ride out the storm in an almost seamless way.

We are confident that we will be able to continue to operate effectively and maintain business continuity for any future challenges.

To find out how Feed4ward can help with your control or automation project, contact us at sales@feed4ward.com