The COVID 19 pandemic came like a shock to all of us and is still there to major impact our business operations worldwide. Talking about the initial time, it was quite established that none of us were prepared for this sudden halt in the manufacturing and distribution departments, as this industry requires the presence of humans to carry out activities at each and every step. When the first wave of pandemic started entering our country, all the production and distribution process had to be completely stopped. This created a huge loss for businesses around our country as there were still expenses to be carried out like providing salaries to the employees, there was a fear that the raw materials may go fatal and at the same time other expenses like utility bills and rent were still unavoidable expenses.
The manufacturing stage is the most cared venture in business operations, as even a small mistake or ignorance could lead to producing final products which will not match up with the quality we deliver. Hence whilst there are these hi-tech equipment used to manufacture these products, it still requires the attention of a human to ensure that
there are no mishaps happening. By doing so, it not only ensures a quality product but in the long run, it also helps to make sure that the equipment is used to its best potential. Whilst the equipment looks after the heavy duty, there are also some precision based jobs in the manufacturing industry which need to be taken care of by humans only. Hence this requires a large number of people to be present during the manufacturing stage.
In the case of the distribution stage, man power plays a crucial role to ensure that the goods reach the customers at the promised time. As if our products are not available in the market when there is a need, there is a huge possibility that our goodwill and customer base gets impacted, as there are many competitors in the market. Right from Order taking, packaging, shipping and delivering there are a lot of people involved who make this distribution channel fast and efficient, even if there is a mistake done by any one of them could lead to a total disruption to the system and lead to a disaster.
When the lockdown was imposed shutting down everything, the entire industry had to completely stop as the majority of the work is done by being in close proximity to one another. It felt like there would be a major demise in all mid to small range manufacturers and distribution channels as they wouldn’t be able to survive as easily as how the high range manufacturers and distributors were. There wasn’t anything which could be done though, unless the government gave permission to restart the industry operations.
After the imposition of the lockdown, slowly but steadily the entire industry started to turn back to being normal. It was observed that the majority of the companies including Pentagon Tapes, who preferred using traditional methods, suddenly adapted to technology and that is what made it possible to enable many workers to work from home or at the convenience of their workstations whilst only the essential departments could come physically to carry out their work. The integration of technology not only helped the company in getting their statistics back on track but it also enabled a lot of companies to save on a lot of unnecessary expenses.
After the introduction of the advanced IT infrastructure, it seemed to be a challenge to educate all the workers on how to properly use these new devices and softwares, as to derive desired result from them, But thanks to the hard work of HR and the Learning and Development Department, things started shaping up slowly and steadily, and currently, we can proudly say that things came back to normal operational capacity in both manufacturing and distribution aspects of the business until the second wave of pandemic came through and imposed yet another lockdown. While there was still a weekend lockdown in states like maharashtra, the companies could still get to do some business and keep up with their expenses, but now that there is a lockdown imposed again, this has led into the industry going back to being shut. There is a sill a hope that, due to the technological advancements in majority of the industry runners, once things start again the recovery rate will be much better than last time, but as the COVID 19 cases seems to be rising, it is anticipated that it will a long time, before we will get to start operations full fledged again.
