Evaluating Supplier Reliability After COVID-19?
As is the old saying: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Knowing who you can count on in difficult circumstances, is sometimes in question, until “it hits the fan.”
Everyone is monitoring the COVID-19 situation as it evolves day-by-day. Business leaders, like you, are doing everything you can to ensure continuity of your operations – planning for liquidity, communicating with your clients and team members, finding alternative funding sources, and much more.
You might also find this to be an excellent time to reevaluate your relationships with your key suppliers. Ask yourself if they will still be around when our economy returns to normal. Will they be capable of responding in a timely fashion when there will be higher-than-normal demand for rapid ramp-up? Were they ready and available when we needed them?
If you are involved in facility management – either as a specialist in plant maintenance or as your business’ senior leader or owner – it is essential to review your vendor relationships. For many industries, there will be a pent-up demand for products, and your operations may be under pressure to produce and deliver to your customers rapidly.
Perform an audit of the key suppliers and contractors on whom you will be relying when your operations are back on-line. One vital contractor to review will be your industrial flooring specialist. Over the last twenty years, there has been an influx of part-time pretenders, masquerading as true industrial flooring professionals. Many of these vendors will not be ready and available when you need them because they will no longer be in existence. Surface Technology, Inc. has been serving our customers (in good times and bad) since 1988. You can count on us to be there, with the industry’s most skilled and experienced craftsmen when you need us, now or in the future.
Assemble a small team of your maintenance and plant management professionals at your idle facility – ensuring you follow social distancing best-practices, of course. This downtime is the ideal opportunity to perform a thorough review of your flooring conditions throughout your manufacturing plant, food and beverage operation, warehouses, packaging facilities, and so on.
If you find that your facilities’ flooring will need to be resurfaced and recoated before the sudden ramp-up of production, will your flooring vendor be able to handle the task on short notice? Here are the questions to ask:
- Do they have adequate numbers of dedicated epoxy techs to handle your flooring project during a period of heavy workload?
- Do their specialists have the experience to ensure successful completion of mission-critical projects – on-time and on-budget?
- Do they have experience with highly-sensitive and tight-security facilities such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, food and beverage processing operations, electronics manufacturing (ESD flooring), and cannabis grow rooms?
- Can they mobilize and deploy quickly anywhere within the continental United States and southern Canadian provinces?
- Do their teams operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
- Do they have rapid access to premium-grade, industrial-quality epoxy floor coating products that they can custom blend to your specific needs? Or are they using ordinary epoxy floor paint that is sold by DIY stores?
- Do they have a dedicated project manager who will be on-site to monitor and direct the installation process personally, providing an experienced, knowledgeable single-point-of-contact who will keep you informed at all stages of the process?
When you select Surface Technology, Inc. as your preferred epoxy floor coating contractor, the answer to all those questions is “YES!”
When the current crisis begins to resolve itself – and it will – there will be a high demand for licensed, experienced, and reliable industrial flooring professionals such as the technicians from Surface Technology, Inc. Now is the time to prepare your estimates and rough in some dates for resurfacing and installation of industrial flooring, coating, and lining systems.
Click here to email Michael Greenblatt, President of S.T.I., to discuss your projects. Or call us toll-free at 1-800-PROJECT.
Get in Touch
We know you’re busy. We’re here to get you the information you need as quickly as possible. Whether you just want a quick estimation on your project specifications or want to talk to an expert about your project, we are here to help you.
