In the last episode, the story began with the premise that you should be preparing in case of an emergency that forces you from your facilities or makes your facilities uninhabitable. These things happen for many reasons. Weather, earthquakes, tornados, and floods are only part of the story and not the most common reasons for a disruption. We live in a time when security breaches are a problem, but so are physical events that can disrupt internet access, power, and water due to cut lines, main breaks, and accidents.

Let’s assume you have a great imagination and can create scenarios that would deny you access to your facility. Even if you have a hot site or additional plant sites, losing access to a location is disruptive. In the last segment, the focus was on disaster recovery. DR is a subset of a more extensive business recovery and continuity plan every company should have. It focuses on the IT infrastructure, systems, hardware, and software used to accomplish production. It includes the protocols to reach out to employees and customers to let them know that there has been an event that is disrupting normal business. While important, there are business processes that need immediate attention, too.

Business Continuity Plans look at the business from every angle to identify what makes it run. In addition to the production manufacturing systems, business continuity plans have internal, vendor-facing, customer-facing, market-facing, and employee-facing elements. The focus is on getting back to business, either on the original site or at an alternative site.

If you have a Business Continuity Plan (BCP), great! It’s time to review it for the current market and business conditions. If you have a DR Plan but not a BCP, this is the time to look at your DR Plan and build on it to create a BCP. If you are missing a DR or BC plan, the two articles in this arc give you a blueprint!

Planning

Activating a BCP means that something serious has happened. This is beyond a temporary power outage or short drop in internet access. While they are serious, the BCP is the action plan when the current working environment is no longer available or functional, making it impossible to process, print, finish, and deliver customer work. The most common reasons to implement the plan focus on weather-related disasters, earthquakes, and fires, but you may need to invoke the processes if you are the victim of a cyber attack or the local utilities become unavailable. Another valid reason is supply chain failure which is so impactful that you have no raw materials.

Begin your plan with some high-level categorizations to guide when to invoke your plan. You may want several BCPs that address different levels of disruption but start with one. Next, build your big picture. What do you produce, and how do you produce it? If you did not have access to your means of production, where could you execute the work to maintain your obligations to your customers? You might have additional plants or friendly competitors who could take the work. In either case, the time to have the conversation and set up a test to see if it is possible to move your work.

Hint: If you maintain your files and software on a local server, you will have bigger challenges than those who have moved to cloud-based protocols.

Documentation

Your plan should document what type of work can be moved, where it can go, how supplies might be redirected or acquired (especially if you lose access to your warehouse), and if you plan to redirect employees to new locations. Remember, employees may be involved in their own recovery efforts.

Think of this as the big tent you will work under. You may find that some work uses paper that is so specialized or finishing that is so complex that moving the work seems impossible. How would you approach your customer? You may find that you have intense security and encryption requirements – how can you maintain your levels of security if you move work to another location? Think about every aspect of how you produce jobs – the raw materials, input files, the software you use, your automation, your manual processes, your equipment, your warehouse, and your back-office systems.

Communication

The DR Plan should have all employee contact details and a communication plan. After coming through the last couple of years, many companies have protocols for working from home, but machine operators and warehouse workers will need direction. Coordinate communication so that both plans tell the same story. If there is not a work-from-home protocol in place, this would be a good time to build that plan. The BCP picks up the thread for how to get everyone back to work. It may be at the original site or an alternative site. The best plan is transparent communication to employees on a regular cadence.

The same is needed for communication with vendors and suppliers. Inform them as quickly as possible of a disruption and begin working on how they can help. Suppliers may be able to stop or reroute shipments to a new location. Vendors may offer help in supporting your production needs. In case of a disruption that destroys a building and its contents, you will need their help with insurance claims and in acquiring new equipment. Knowing what you have, in detail, is a fast path to getting help.

Customers also need transparent communication. They buy work to support their businesses. When you can’t deliver, it impacts their business. Your BCP should include plans for moving work, and that may require a plan for specialty substrates and finishing that cause different types of work to be routed to alternative locations.

These plans take work to create, but the effort doesn’t end with a final document. A BCP is a living document that requires constant care. Your vendors may change. Your potential hot sites may change. This is a lot to digest. Have questions? Put them in the comments or send them to me.