Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1236528
APRIL 2020 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 135 Dear Customer, First of all, please allow me to thank you for your understanding during these challenging times. For all of us at Elmatica, you—our customer—is the most important element of the supply chain. I understand that one can be frustrated, have questions, and want clear answers and precise dates for delivery. However, this is an unprecedented situation and a challenging time for the global electronics industry. This will, unfortunately, have a negative impact on the entire supply chain. Orders are delayed, confirmed, and re-confirmed. We have been working closely with all our manufacturing partners on a global scale these last few months in order to secure your orders and deliveries. Sometimes, it feels like taking two steps forward, then one step back. However, our values—namely transparency, predictability, and integrity—are always leading our priorities and focus. What are we doing? I wanted to briefly inform you what we at Elmatica are doing to secure your orders and facilitate your requests. Our management and officer team have weekly meetings to discuss the latest development and ensure that everybody is up to date on the latest information. A task group was established over one month ago, and they have a minimum of two weekly internally and external updates on the situation. We are in daily contact with the management of our Asian and European manufacturers to get the latest updates, prioritize, and negotiate capacity. We can ensure our customers with urgent demand transfer to other suppliers as non-China alterna- tives, like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, the U.S., and Europe. We are constantly monitoring the situation in Europe, making sure our colleagues are safe, taking precautions, and devel- oping new internal routines. Even if the situation seems to get back on track in China, our manufacturers operate with 80% manpower, but the backlogs from Chinese New Year and the COVID-19 situation are causing extra lead times from 4–8 weeks. What can you do? The situation with reduced production output does not only impact PCB manufacturers but raw material manufacturers— such as laminate and chemical suppliers—also face the same challenge. We strongly advise you to place orders as early as possible to secure production priority and material availability. We anticipate that the raw material supply can experience challenges in the coming months when inventory on stock depletes and when PCB manufacturers recover from the low pro- duction output. How to stay updated? We understand you have questions regarding your orders. This is why we have updated our system with live tracking of or- der confirmation to you, so one can easily click a link and get an overview of all your orders and their respective status. Our customer service team is continuously monitoring all the orders and conveys any news to you. They also work closely with our global logistic partners to ensure that the shipping capacity is fully utilized. We continuously update our Q&A with new information on our website. On behalf of the Elmatica team and myself, I wish to thank you for your understanding during these extraordinary times. Didrik Bech CEO