Customer Letter

Continued Diligence During the Pandemic

Page updated August 2, 2020

Questions on our products relevant to SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 response? We have technical experts prioritized
to help.

• Call (800) 325-5832 or Email COVID-19@milliporesigma.com.
• For support in your local language you can find the contact information here.
• Working on COVID-19? Find relevant products on our centralized COVID-19 webpage.
  
• For an update on our approach and actions, please see the following FAQs.

Our principles during this pandemic have been to keep our employees safe, positively contribute to public health and to ensure business continuity. We continue with these principles, as a company dedicated to collaborating with the global scientific community to solve life science’s toughest problems, ultimately accelerating access to health.

Please see the information below for updates on our global status and actions.

Our Sites

Given the criticality of our products and services for human health and scientific progress, we are proud of our teams who have continued to develop, manufacture, package and ship products, or provide services at our sites since the onset of the pandemic.

Our global manufacturing sites are all operating, although capacity and local conditions are variable, and each of our sites is continuing to manage business continuity plans with pandemic situational scenarios.

Site Preparedness:

• Our pandemic situational scenarios are still active and include cleaning and sanitation schedules, workplace distancing and when relevant, staggered shifts that strive to avoid disruptions and serve as a precautionary measure for ensuring our operations remain intact for the long term.
  
• Our site heads have further scenario planning protocols prepared with specific response measures for the continued dynamic environment.
  
• At this time, some sites continue to request that external visits and audits of customers and suppliers be postponed or redirected towards virtual meeting options.

Employee Health and Safety:

In select regions, in accordance with local government guidance, employees are also returning to offices with precautionary measures in place.

We continue to monitor the evolving situation on a local basis with the support of data-driven dashboards, and have taken the following actions to mitigate exposure and spread of the virus:

• Implemented site-appropriate health and safety precautionary measures.
  
• Updated trainings and protocols emphasizing important topics such as hygiene and self-reporting any COVID-19 symptoms.
• Arranged remote working and flexible work schedules, as possible.
• Resumed local travel in some regions, while also continuing to leverage virtual meeting technology to collaborate with the global scientific community.
• Continued informing employees through several channels — from email to virtual town halls as well as a global network of hotlines — of company policies, guidelines on working from home, and resources from WHO, CDC, local governments and our benefits providers.

Supply Continuity

Our global COVID-19 Task Force actively evaluates our overall supply chain, both of our products and raw material suppliers, to mitigate risk and supply disruption.

Our Life Science supply chain is composed of more than 300,000 products, across 55 manufacturing sites and 100 distribution points, and the majority of our portfolio areas have stable inventory levels to support orders. We have determined options for alternative sources, if required.

Across our overall network, our business continuity plans have been successful in:

• Ensuring minimal disruption in supply by identifying replacements for backordered products, implementing redundant inventory in our distribution centers and reviewing warehouse strategies to accommodate for locally enforced measures.
  
• Maintaining close contact with our suppliers to review open purchase orders and assess safety stock levels. We are increasing stock of products sourced and activating our validated secondary suppliers in accordance with our quality procedures where necessary. Any identified impact on orders will be communicated directly to customers through our Commercial Services team.

Although we do not see significant elevated risk to our overall network, we do recognize that some sites and portfolio areas have variability in capacity, output, and transportation impacts.

Supporting Surge Demand

COVID-19 has initiated unprecedented demand as some of our customers race to develop vaccines and treatments, as well as continue the production of non-COVID-19 lifesaving and enhancing drugs.

We have clear allocation principles for the relevant products and services supporting COVID-19, as well as critical life-saving or preventative therapeutics outside of COVID-19. Using these principles, our COVID-19 Response Team will prioritize supply, based on multiple, strategic factors that positively support public health.

We are also accelerating investments at key sites while adjusting planned production schedules for some high demand products, in order to fulfill unprecedented demand.

Global Transportation

As regions across the globe recover and reopen, our dedicated import and export teams continue monitoring all available trade lanes to optimize transportation activities. Limited air transportation continues to create some delays with the inter-company transportation of our goods, but overall, we have not seen this significantly impact our service levels.

Predictability and stability of global transportation continues to improve, and we will maintain diligence in monitoring backlog and using all available trade lanes to prevent disruption.

Service and Meetings at Customer Sites

Throughout the pandemic we’ve recognized the imperative nature of keeping our systems and installed equipment in Hospitals and Clinical settings, Testing Labs, Pharma and Biotech operative and serviced. We continue to review service needs, leverage virtual meetings and digital instrument connectivity to continue critical service across the globe.

We have regional guidance and processes created for visiting customer labs and offices that have reopened. Our first principle and priority of keeping our employees safe remains, so our teams are working to continue collaborating with creative, socially distanced formats and continue to leverage virtual meeting technology.