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Cymer's Ed Brown offers more details about San Diego wildfires' impact on company, its employees |
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Nov 01, 2007 at 07:45 AM |
Although I was glad to hear the news about Cymer's restart of operations earlier this week at its San Diego headquarters campus, details in the official PR were sketchy.
I contacted the company with some follow-up questions, which were answered Wednesday evening (Oct. 31) by Ed Brown, Cymer's president and COO. Here's what Ed said via email:
How close did the fires come to the Cymer campus? Was there a time when it looked like they might reach HQ?
All access roads and main transportation arteries to Cymer's headquarters in Rancho Bernardo were blocked during the time of the fires. For about 24 hours, our facilities and the surrounding neighborhoods were in high danger.
When did the facilities have to be evacuated and how many employees were involved?
Around 6 a.m., Monday, October 22, I ordered the immediate closure of the plant. We believed the majority of Cymer employees were already evacuating from their homes.
What kind of cleanup had to be done in order to reopen the campus, both externally and internally? For example, did the cleanroom and lab filtration systems hold up to the smoke or did they need filter changeouts or other types of maintenance? Was any componentry or other inventory compromised by the smoke?
Cymer's facilities department remained in constant contact with Rancho Bernardo officials regarding the state of our headquarters throughout the crises. As soon as access roads opened midafternoon on Wednesday, October 24, our facilities team began immediate assessment of plant physical operations to determine necessary cleanup efforts. Cymer's critical cleanroom manufacturing areas benefit from high-efficiency particulate air filters (HEPA), which made these crucial campus rooms the least impacted by lingering smoke and odor. The remaining areas of the campus were heavily influenced by ambient air quality. Safety teams took samples of the air in all campus buildings and concluded all levels were acceptable before employees were asked back to the office. Minor external cleanup was needed. To our knowledge, no inventory or componentry was damaged by the smoke.
What effect will the shutdown have on your manufacturing and shipment schedule? What have you been telling your customers (both OEM and device-makers)?
Once it became clear the campus would again be shut down on Tuesday, October 23, I asked that all functions concerned with customer support provide me with specific needs for resolution plans. Whether additional regional planning and/or execution was required, we did what we could to minimize our San Diego impact on customers' business continuance and performance. Due to our global network of inventory and field support engineers, we were able to provide an uninterrupted service level to our customers. No revenue loss occurred as a result of the fires.
Has there been any discussion of possibly moving more of the R&D/manufacturing/etc. into a "safer" region, or at least a second site of some sort?
No.
Did any employees get hurt?
No.
How many employees have lost their homes, or had their homes badly damaged?
We believe only two individuals actually suffered full loss of their homes. Most will have some level of residual damage to deal with.
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