Before, During and After the Pandemic – Measures Taken, Lessons Learned

I have had the dubious pleasure of having been part of G+D’s global Corona crisis team for the past 15 months, during which time I have had the chance to gain live insight into what has been happening with the more than 11,500 people at the more than 50 sites of our company group worldwide and at our customer sites in almost all countries on this planet during the crisis.

It all started back in February 2020, when the G+D Global Executive Management team met for its annual kick-off meeting, live in Munich with over 100 colleagues. As none of our colleagues from our card factory in China, neighbouring Wuhan, could travel, we prepared a live video message for them, waving with German and Chinese flags – not realising how close the virus already was to all of us.

We learned all too soon that the virus travels fast. Exactly one month after that Chinese video greeting, we put our IT infrastructure in Germany to the first major test and sent every office worker home with their computers.

And on the shopfloor? In almost all our plants we managed to keep running without interruption, being an essential service as a supplier of a merchandise which is tremendously popular in times of crisis – namely cash. This did, however, involve hygiene concepts, separation of staff into A/B/C shifts, disinfection teams of men in white overalls with masks and full gear, equipped with gas tanks connected to pipes, rather like the heroes of the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. And HR and security departments working 24/7 in order to manage protective measures, keep everybody informed and do contact tracing. But the biggest impact related to travelling and thus also to project implementation at customers’ sites. Business trips either became impossible or turned into something like an expedition, including minimum two weeks of quarantine upon arrival and on return.

Now what has helped us most during the pandemic so far? What have we learned?

Well, my learning is that the worst you can do is not to make decisions or to delay them for too long. Communicate, inform openly and honestly and engage your team, even if you do not know all the answers! This is what drove the team spirit for us.

During initial discussions of ‘who is better off during the pandemic, the factory worker using public transport or the office worker doing homeschooling in parallel’, we concluded that:

• Everybody counts, whether at home or on-site

• It is called WORKING in home office

• Having a job in a successful company, also in future, is a good thing.

This created a lot of purpose and… confidence.

Even more than in normal times, transparency is also key towards third parties, no matter whether these are customers, suppliers or any other partners. In the end, an unpleasant truth outweighs false pleasantry. It helped to have many long-term partnerships which also supported bad news. Friends in peace have proven to be strong allies in war.

Learning the hard way

In some cases, however, we also had to learn the hard way that an order confirmation from a supplier is not automatically a lorry in the yard. When airfreight is reduced and land border regulations allow lorries to cross borders but not necessarily the drivers or security personnel, keeping the supply chain running becomes an issue.

In production we were in the lucky position to have very strong vertical integration within our company group. Nevertheless, goods had to be transported and logistics were a challenge. Typical solutions included:

• If drivers or security personnel are not allowed to cross borders, send a team from the other side of the border to take over the shipment.

• If your company, as an essential service, needs boxes and packaging tape to pack products from suppliers which are closed down… convince the authorities that your small local supplier is essential too.

• A slow ship is better than a grounded plane.

• When sea, regular airfreight and land transport were no option, we used the James Bond approach, hiring a Learjet to distribute intaglio printing plates from one continent to another to keep our production plants running. It was the safest way, although not exactly cheap.

• Do not try to source what others need more urgently, for example masks or disinfectant, no matter how urgently you need it yourself. Better: use your own facilities and nearby partners to produce locally, even if it is less perfect. DIY was the slogan.

To me, the most remarkable sourcing scheme was when we ran out of ethanol to clean our rotary printing presses, and asked a renowned local distillery to produce some exclusive fruit brandy for us. I am so happy that we did not have to do it in the end as it would have broken my heart: this sells for €50 a litre and tastes far too good for wiping gravure cylinders. But it would have been an option.

Centralisation not the answer

An initial reflex in many organizations in a crisis is to centralise decisions in order to ‘control’ everything from the top. Does it work? Well… no!

A large company’s production and service network worldwide combined with global, regional and local rules and regulations, which change almost daily in a crisis, means those involved just cannot be managed centrally.

The pandemic did not follow any standard, it did not respect our processes and it had different impact at different sites. Tailormade solutions were needed locally all over the world. Local teams have proven to be the most powerful and adaptable solution scouts to a crisis, if you let them work… and do not ask them to write management reports every 12 hours.

But is there also something more general to be learned for the future? I definitely would say yes.

First, we learned that value chain depth brings resilience inhouse. The stronger you are vertically integrated, the better.

Second, a global business footprint and a strong physical presence all over the world not only helps to locally deliver services to your customers when travelling is restricted. It also provides great learning opportunities, which can be transferred to many other places where the crisis has not materialized yet. What we learned in China helped us in the US as much as in India, Rwanda, Brazil or Germany.

Third, digitalisation drives speed and innovation. The pandemic forced us to implement, experiment and learn quickly and opened our eyes to the practical advantages of digital work. Ad hoc global expert teams to solve problems had been possible before as well, but now all staff were available as they were not sitting on planes flying around the world.

We implemented virtual factory acceptance tests and site acceptance tests with our customers at their sites as well as with our suppliers on our sites. Even remotely guided maintenance became a new standard, with the European mechanical engineer leading the Asian or African maintenance team through the installation of a printing machine or a banknote processing machine.

Greatest lesson – adaptability

The greatest lesson the crisis has taught us though, to my mind, is the virtue of adaptability. Adapting to the challenges of a crisis puts stress on an organisation, but it also provides an injection of adrenalin which helps to find faster and more efficient processes or simply more secure and resilient ones.

As an example, we put up a drive-in COVID test center in the carpark of our Munich headquarters. At the time of the first wave, it was very difficult to get tested by the public health system and get a quick response – it could take up to 10 days. Employees could make an online appointment with our company doctor, drive there without any personal contact, get tested with a PCR test and quickly learn about their health status within 48 hours. This initiative brought us tremendously better health and safety and boosted employee motivation.

We discussed with industry partners more crisis resistant products and solutions. Often, THE magical solution could not be found but valuable know-how was created for an educated appropriate way forward. Many other processes were adapted rather swiftly to the better – much faster than in normal times.

This spirit of engagement, entrepreneurship, innovation and motivation to adapt to a new situation is worth preserving far beyond this COVID crisis. If we are able to achieve this, then the crisis will not have been wasted.