Infineon CEO Reinhard Ploss (pictured) gave an insight into how manufacturing companies can tackle the coronavirus at the company’s earnings meeting this week.

“We have been able to largely maintain our supply chain and other activities in recent weeks despite all difficulties, such as lockdown regulations, tight raw material supply, limited air freight capacity and quarantined employees. We have adopted quickly to the new situation,” said Ploss.

In Malaysia where the company has a fab and a back end facility, both plants were ordered to be shut by the government.

“Based on a very constructive dialogue with the authorities and by putting in place strict distancing and hygiene measures, we were able to bring our workers back and re-ramp capacities,” said Ploss, “we are back to full operation at both sites. More generally, all of our major manufacturing plants worldwide are up and running to the extent required.”

“We are adopting loading levels primarily in front end to the current demand picture we are seeing, which on average means something like 70% to 80% utilisation,” added Ploss, “we are shifting capacity corridors between business segments to best be able to ensure supply continuity for our customers. Outside manufacturing, all other functions like R&D, sales, marketing and administrative remain, let’s call it, operational, thanks to working from home. Our IT department enabled virtual collaboration from the first day of lockdown for more than 10,000 employees with excellent performance.”

As the biggest auto IC supplier, since the acquisition of Cypress, Infineon is particularly affected by the slump in car production.

“Market researchers and brokerage houses appear to be in a race to lower their predictions,” said Ploss wryly.

He reckoned car production in 2020 would be down between 15% and 25%.

For calendar Q1, Infineon had sales of €1,986 million for a profit of  €274 million, and  for calendar Q2, sales of €1.9-2.3 billion are expected.