CEO Gregory Hayes Shares How Raytheon Technologies is Responding to COVID-19

Raytheon Technologies has a history of tackling some of the world’s toughest problems, but the outbreak of COVID-19 presented a range of challenges unlike any we had ever experienced. I am exceedingly proud of the ingenuity and resilience our employees have demonstrated during the pandemic. Despite considerable disruption to daily routines and concerns about the health and safety of loved ones, our employees remained focused on supporting their communities, delivering on their customer commitments and protecting their fellow employees.

When the coronavirus struck, we moved quickly to implement new health and safety measures to protect our approximately 200,000 employees globally, nearly half of whom continued to go into our offices and factories to perform critical work that kept planes flying and ensured our national security. We have some of the brightest minds in aerospace and defense working for us, and many of them applied their expertise in areas such as technology, product design, engineering and supply chain management to develop new products and solutions to address the crisis.

Raytheon Technologies may be known as a leading manufacturer of jet engines, radars, and missile defense systems, but that did not stop our teams from launching their own grassroots efforts to design, assemble and ship urgently needed ventilators and face shields in a matter of weeks. This was a truly amazing feat, and one that I take great pride in talking about since it demonstrates the ingenuity and commitment of our talented workforce.

Teams across our U.S. sites and globally harnessed the power of Raytheon Technologies’ 3D printing capabilities to manufacture, assemble and ship 20,000 face shields in one month. In Canada and the U.K. our engineers worked around the clock with local government and medical companies to design and manufacture ventilators for local hospitals. And where we couldn’t manufacture what was needed, we helped by reaching into our own supplies and enlisting the help of our supply chain partners to source more than 500,000 badly needed component parts for existing ventilator manufacturers.

Simultaneously, some of our most experienced professionals in finance, legal and supply chain management set up a special office to advise small businesses supporting the industrial defense base on how to access much-needed government funding. As a major defense contractor, we were able to disperse over $1 billion in accelerated payment to suppliers in need, and work with the U.S. Small Business Administration to help with their educational outreach efforts.

Like many companies, we know that the needs of those around us go far beyond medical care. That’s why we redirected our charitable giving to help meet our communities’ most basic needs, including donating $5 million to Feeding America and matching the contributions our employees made to the Global Foodbanking Network.

I am truly inspired by the professionalism and resolve our global team of professionals continues to demonstrate as we confront this pandemic together, and I am deeply grateful for their dedication to our company’s mission and values in this challenging time. All of us at Raytheon Technologies remain committed to doing whatever we can, bringing our global resources and talents to bear, to help address this once unfathomable crisis.