Intel CEO Letter to Customers: ‘We are here for you’

Today, Bob Swan, Intel CEO, shared the following message with customers and partners:

To our valued customers and partners,

I am reaching out to you to confirm our strong commitment to you during the ongoing coronavirus situation. While this remains a developing situation, Intel factories around the world continue to operate on a relatively normal basis. We are here for you.

Ensuring the safety and well-being of our employees, service partners and communities continues to be our number one commitment. At the same time, we recognize that the role our industry plays in the world is more essential now than it has ever been. You provide vital services, tools and infrastructure to millions of people who are directly struggling with this virus, caring for those who are, or doing their part through social distancing and other shared efforts to help ensure the safety of family, friends and neighbors and to ultimately defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our global technology community depends on each other’s well-being and performance in the best of times. Today, we are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic deployment of remote work and digital access to services across every domain, including medicine, education, government, entertainment and more. In the coming weeks and months, services will be further digitized as the creativity of a massive work-from-home population gets rolling.

While many are naturally focused on continuity and hunkering-down, this moment is also about innovating – often in real time – to support critical services in a highly dynamic environment. This puts incredible demands on our teams.

We at Intel are fortunate to be deeply engaged with many of you in providing the tools and services millions of people around the world still depend upon in their daily lives – and in putting technology to work toward understanding and fighting this virus. For example:

• Artificial intelligence and high-performance computing are expediting scientific research. In China, Intel teamed with Lenovo and BGI Genomics to accelerate the analysis of genomic characteristics of COVID-19. Our combined work will further advance the capabilities of BGI’s sequencing tools to help scientists investigate transmission patterns of the virus and create better diagnostic methods.
• Robots are helping medical professionals care for patients while keeping them safe from infection. Intel platform-based robots have been deployed in Chinese hospitals to protect doctors and nurses by transporting medical supplies and surgical equipment to reduce human-to-human interactions.
• Additionally, Intel is working alongside our customers and partners to enable technology solutions for virtual learning for those with the greatest need among our students and teachers. The stakes are higher than ever for a new level of access and functionality for all at home.

I am equally inspired by the deep commitment of our teams to sustain our manufacturing, assembly, test and supply chain operations in Oregon, New Mexico, California and Arizona, as well as Israel, Ireland, China, Malaysia, Vietnam and other Intel and partner locations around the world. They are working hard to make sure you can continue to be successful while sustaining a rate of on-time delivery currently greater than 90%.

We have come together and partnered in many ways to make this happen. That includes working with local and national governments to help ensure worker safety while allowing critical operations to continue. And we have collaborated to identify short-term burst shipping capacity across suppliers by working closely to share collective resources, planes and trucks to deliver the best solution for our customers.

We are doing everything in our power to keep all our teams safe, whether they are performing critical work in factories, any of our sites worldwide, across our supply chains or remotely. Intel’s Pandemic Leadership Team, established more than 15 years ago to improve Intel’s crisis management response capability, is deeply engaged in this work. This specialized team includes medical and safety experts who work to safeguard the well-being of employees and minimize the spread of infection. They also collaborate with local governments and public health organizations to implement their recommendations. In the past, the team has successfully helped Intel manage through global health issues such as bird flu, SARS, Ebola, Zika and the H1N1 virus.

PLT members constantly monitor and update our status, policies and recommendations, recently summarized on the Intel Newsroom. That focus on safety applies equally to our customer and partners.  At times that means we are asking for your patience as we learn to interact and collaborate in new ways.

As you and your teams navigate the next few months, there will be challenges. I ask that you please reach out to me and my team if there is anything we can do to help you fulfill your mission or to help others who need it in the crisis. In response to the growing impact and need, we have donated $1 million to the International Red Cross to support relief efforts for the coronavirus outbreak. We are currently assessing additional opportunities to provide support to our local communities.

Our technology community is unique in touching nearly every person on Earth every day. Our tech is at the heart of so many important breakthroughs that have true global impact. I expect this critical period will be no different. We look forward to your continued partnership in this journey.

Please take the necessary precautions to help ensure your own health and safety and that of your loved ones.

Bob Swan, Intel CEO

Source: INTEL