COVID-19 – Preparation Measures

To Our Important Customers,

The principal mission of our company is to serve our customers to the best of our ability. We are well aware of the challenges we could encounter in the fluid situation we all face by the uncertainty of the COVID-19 spreading. We have enacted a plan to most importantly protect the health and safety of our employees, their families, our communities and our valued customers. We also have adopted this plan in order to have the best path for continuation of this customer service and so we will provide a stable supply chain for our customers.

I would like to share a brief update of our plan so that your organization will know the steps we are taking to perpetuate that mission.  Like many of you, we are limiting our company’s exposure by suspending all domestic and international air travel, as well as requiring self-quarantine for anyone who has traveled abroad for the last 14 days. Anyone who has had household members that have traveled fall under the same guidelines. We are cancelling meetings in our facilities and limiting our outside contact to “essential only” visits at customer’s or manufacturer’s sites. We are moving a significant portion of our staff to remote status. We are immediately moving those who have the capability (that is the majority of our sales force) and we are preparing for even more to go remote should the need arise. We are getting the maximum amount of social distance while still functioning at full capacity. However, our sales staff is willing and capable of visiting your site should a need arise and you request their presence (providing there is not been a confirmed case of COVID-19 at your site). Out of consideration of yours and their health, we have asked them to limit personal contact to “essential visits”.

As a contingency plan, we have 28 branch locations throughout the Southeast. Today all are open and ready to serve, but should we need to close an individual location we have existing IT systems that allows us to assess all necessary customer information from any location. The phones can be transferred to any of the other supporting locations as needed. We have 14 different repair facilities in that same footprint to also serve you. Tencarva maintains approximately $17M in inventory at different locations to serve our customers. We have always believed our best opportunity to serve our customers is to have inventory that suits their needs with operations that provide 24/7 support. We don’t plan to change that in the near future. We have great partners that have also provided us with similar plans of continuity but should their supply chains be affected; we have this layer of security which enables us to continue serving.

A few items:

We have reached out to management of our key suppliers and they have all enacted continuation policies that involve social distancing and supply chain management. All of them are open and inventory levels are currently reported at normal levels.
Our multinational partners are reporting that cargo times are increasing. This could increase lead times in the coming weeks.
All of our local offices are open and should that change your calls will be seamlessly rerouted. Our sales staff has the ability to work remotely. The existing methods you reach us will remain unchanged.
We are still receiving packages and making shipments. Our manufacturing is at full capacity for the items we make.
We still want to serve you daily and we are asking that our employees use Skype or Facetime to provide a near face to face experience when possible. Although we normally serve you in person, this is a typical way we communicate internally.
Proactive and open communication is a hallmark of how we serve. Should a change be necessary, we will notify you of those changes.

Despite the strains this is placing on our businesses, we are resilient to serving our customers. We strive to excel in times of need, whether it is a plant emergency, natural disaster or in this case a public health concern. We expect no different of ourselves in this case. We deeply thank you for the 42 years you have trusted us to be your partner and we are here to serve.

Sincerely,

Edwin W. Pearce, III

President

Tencarva Machinery Company

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