PRINCETON, Ind. (NI)-- Many Hoosier companies are slowly getting back to work. That includes the Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana plant in Gibson County.
The plant stopped operations on March 23. On Monday, about 2,000 employees returned to work. The other 5,000 employees will come back on Friday.
TMMI President Leah Curry says some auto production has started this week, but most of the time has been dedicated to going over the new safety guidelines that have been put in place.
"We've had, probably, about 100 new protocols put in place," Curry told Inside Indiana Business. "Our team has been working very hard over the last several weeks putting those in place."
For example, she says employees will have to follow the six-foot social distancing procedure. They've also installed automatic hand sanitizing pumps.
"And then we have thermal imaging cameras in some of our entrances that takes the temperatures on 100% of the people," she said.
Employees will be required to wear masks at all times, unless they're on break for lunch.
"Knowing how to wear a mask, how to put it on and how to take it off. There are probably ten different things you need to know about just wearing a mask," Curry added.
Curry says production volume will be slowly ramped up over the next four to five weeks. She says production on Highlanders, Siennas and Sequoias will not return until later this summer.
The plant also started making its own masks, already producing more than 100,000.
Photo: toyota.com