March 12, 2020

IDS Coronavirus/Covid 19 update

To IDS customers and vendors;

As we all face critical decisions and difficulties from the Covid-19 pandemic, we want to make sure you are aware of the efforts IDS has been taking to reduce the chances of the new coronavirus from infecting our staff and our plans so far for mitigating potential adverse impacts.

1. IDS started a daily disinfectant wipe down of all community contact surfaces in early March (door knobs and handles, keypads and other contact surfaces on microwaves, vending machines, copiers, shipping station work stations, hand held RF devices, time clocks, driver check in windows, break room furniture, etc.)  We added a temporary update to our sanitation schedules to document this activity.
2. We added new hand sanitizer stations in the warehouses and offices.
3. We changed policy to temporarily allow aerosol based disinfectants to be used by our staff.
4. We have posted information about Covid-19 and the Flu with instructions regarding hand washing, hygiene, and stay home conditions on every break table and posting board as well as other highly visible locations.
5. We sent a memo to all staff with in the 3/6 payroll distribution, including a memo for those on full paperless payroll, regarding personal hygiene, safety tips regarding this condition, and our stay at home policy.
6. IDS has completed refresher/repeat training on one of our Health and Safety classes specific to personal health.  This includes updated details on handwashing and hand sanitation, specific instructions re: Covid-19, and reminders that sick employees must stay home and this now includes people with cold symptoms. 
7. The key points from the above training class have been repeated in shift start up meetings with focus on hand sanitation and staying home/sent home if cold (and as always flu) symptoms are apparent. 
8. We have limited our travel and continue to review our travel policies. 
9. We are asking customers to limit visits to IDS.
10. We are starting a review of our Disaster Avoidance/Disaster Recovery program to update it for pandemics.  This will likely include additional sanitation efforts, naming additional back-up staff to all positions, and defining return to work criteria for people absent with cold symptoms.
    1. Additionally, we are nearly finished with a survey of all staff not involved in directly handling product regarding their ability to work from home (WFH) and our ability to support WFH technically (equipment, fire-wall capacity, licenses, etc.) for such a large number of people.
       1. We should be reasonably prepared to have most office staff capable of WFH shortly in case that becomes necessary.
    2. We have reviewed staff back up plans internally.
11. We are in regular contact with our contract labor staffing services regarding their staff health and availability of replacement staff for those that may be quarantined.

We will continue to update our clients and vendors of activities and we will alert you if we see conditions materially changing for the worse.  We are advising clients with significant kitting operations to accelerate work order releases to IDS so we can “front load” this activity now as we will try to prioritize outbound shipping over other activity IF our staffing is adversely impacted by this disease directly or indirectly. 

We are also advising that any inventory in transit or kept in alternate locations be forwarded to IDS so that product you expect us to ship is not at risk of being stranded by events at manufacturing or buffer warehouse locations.

We hope your families and businesses are not impacted significantly from this pandemic.

Sincerely                                                        

Mark DeFabis                                                                                                    Michael Jones
CEO                                                                                                                        President/COO