Kawasaki plant prepares for re-opening next week

The plant which employs around 1,000 people has been closed for weeks as work areas and gathering spaces have been deep cleaned.

Administrative staff said they're doing everything they can to ensure employee safety.

117 deaths.

As large businesses across the country and even here locally are grappling with covid-19 in their buildings.

One northwest missouri facility is doing all it can to get ahead of the virus.

Tonight, we take you inside the kawasaki plant in maryville.

<<ron johnson reportingfor the past few weeks the kawasaki plant in maryville has sat nearly emptyengine production halted, as concerns over covid-19 lead management to take action.we're pretty clean anyway but this is a different kind of clean administrative staff voluntarily shutting down the plant for an intensive cleaning while modifying the building and daily procedures to support social distancing what we have done is prepare the plant for the safety of our employees around a thousand employees work here every day, and staff say they want to make sure every one of them is safe at all times.

The changes implemented are seen right as you prepare to walk inside, masks are mandatory and tight workspaces and breakrooms have been modified to accommodate social distancing.

We are maintaining those spaces or if we cannot then we are providing barriers.we put this shield in place so we have that barrier between the employeesadministrative staff also said it's not just about protecting their employee's health, they wanted to make sure their workforce could still depend on a stream of income during the sudden closure.we made sure that our employees were paid a portion of their wage all the way through this.while they stopped of short of saying they were fully prepared for the pandemic this is a very fluid situation.

They add the changes they've put in place put the company on the right track to restarting production we feel good about what we've done we feel good about the efforts, we feel very good very confident in what we're doing.>> the kawasaki plant is set to reopen monday, staff say they plan to stagger in employees to keep from having large crowds in any one area.