Business Management - Industry Trends

Protecting the health and safety of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak is essential. In order to address this issue, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued updated guidance for employers considering screening and testing protocols for employees and job applicants.

The in-plant at the University of California, San Francisco, is contributing to the production of face shields to help protect nurses and physicians from the coronavirus.

We certainly live in a different world these days. With our office in Philadelphia shut down, I’ve been working from home since mid-March, trying to keep tabs on how the coronavirus is impacting in-plants.

In partnership with Xerox, Vortran’s GO2Vent ventilator and related Airway Pressure Monitor (APM-Plus) are deisgned for hospitals and emergency response units fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. The companies will be rapidly scaling up production to somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 ventilators a month by June.

To arm its global channel partner community to navigate challenges associated with COVID-19, HP is providing a variety of financing and leasing options and other incentives.

Just as the COVID-19 outbreak created financial uncertainty on Wall Street and on Main Street, it has also put a deep freeze on impending M&A mega-deals. The novel coronavirus has scuttled Xerox Holdings' $34.9 billion, $24 per share unsolicited, hostile takeover attempt of fellow printing industry icon HP Inc.

Kodak has entered in an agreement with New York State to supply isopropyl alcohol (IPA) to aid in the production of “NYS Clean” hand sanitizer for use in New York. Kodak has begun delivering tanker loads of IPA from its Eastman Business Park facility in Rochester, N.Y.

Calling the word “in-plant” confusing and “too hard to spell,” the entire print industry has come together to prohibit the word from ever being used again. The name they chose to replace it is shocking.

Across the country, printers are stepping up to produce items needed to protect local health workers threatened by the coronavirus pandemic.

SGIA, NAPCO Media, and Printing Industries of America and its affiliates have joined forces to launch a COVID-19 Resource Channel, dedicated to providing the printing and graphic communications industry with up-to-the-minute news and resources on COVID-19 and how to navigate the latest information about the pandemic.