How Solaracks deal with interruptios during COVID-19

How Solaracks deal with interruptios during COVID-19

With the outbreak of corona pandemic worldwide, we are all experiencing an unprecedented time. As the global economy defining which industries and businesses are essential and non-essential, we can see food, construction, manufacturing and energy are essential businesses. Companies in solar industry fall into construction, manufacturing or energy, and in some cases all three categories. At Solaracks, we have outlined how we do during the virus time.

Learn

It is slow down time, we take the chance to learn how to improve our process and more research on the products and industry. We do remote working with our factory all the time, 35minutes drive between office and factory.

Recently we did 2 new designs on post top solar panel mounting structure for rural area.

Add a spring inside frameless module clamp using similar logic on regular mid clamp. Improved ridges of earthing washer, modify the mold. Sharper for easier penetration.

Communicate with suppliers more frequently than usual

Communication is helpful for relationship. Since lead time and logistics are more challenging during the lock down. We have been interacting with our suppliers daily to check in and update. How many workers return, what the capacity is? Now still many workers from Hubei didn’t return, in aluminium extrusion industry there are many workers from Hubei. Extrusion supplier have to employ new ones, but take time to train them and many may not qualify to stay. Also we visit suppliers meeting in person, some random talk.

Continue to work with existing suppliers

It is most likely not the time to start to work with new suppliers. This current environment is the time to leverage your strong relationships to get materials ordered and shipped with as few interruptions as possible. Trusting that your suppliers are acting on your company’s best interests comes with years of working together and the resulting strong relationships.

Set customer expectations

Flexibility means not expecting all deliveries and orders to be as usual. This is the time to understand that it is not easy for suppliers to promise or deliver on orders like it was before. Many manufacturers and delivery companies are limited, so understand what limits they have. For example, manufacturing time for aluminum extrusion has taken one week longer than usual. Normally the production time is 2 weeks, but now it is 3 weeks or longer. Capacity still 80% of last year. Understanding the supplier as well as providing timely and clear explanations to the customer are necessary.

Support customer with masks

Even though it is quite a discussion whether face masks help in containing virus spread. We believe it can stop spreading, when people unaware they are carrier. After we recovered from mask shortage here in China, we purchased 2200pcs mask to send to your clients. To our slogan and sprit, “Be supported”.

To date the atmosphere is still uncertain, but the solar industry global capacity estimated is 120GW in 2020, we are looking forward to supporting to this number.