BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT JANUARY 2019
crisis and recovery, and providing for each.
“You also need to define the roles you will
assign to maximise response effectiveness,”
says Robinson, adding that it’s vital to: “plan
specifically for recovery from IT-specific
conditions, including cyber-related situations.
Collect the detailed information you need to fuel
any response as well as staff and supplier details…
practice the response and iron out any defects.”
As MacKillop says, “consider everything
that is critical to a product’s creation and ensure
you are comfortable that a disruption at any
stage of that lifecycle can be dealt with, in an
acceptable timeframe.”
The last step outlined by Robinson is key:
“make it part of business culture, an accepted
behaviour, supported from the top.” The biggest
issue he finds is that “business continuity
is prone to neglect and underperformance,
maybe judged too difficult or a waste of time,
and widely misunderstood.” The result is that
“everyone assumes it will work. No-one tests or
values it and due to a lack of understanding or
will, people end up being misled.”
Those that already have a BCP are advised
by both Robinson and MacKillop to test it.
Robinson says the test should
initially be passive, “with
senior people sat around a desk
responding to a straightforward
but realistic timed scenario,
such as a fire. Now compare
what they say and do with
what’s written in the plan.”
He adds that if the content
could not be followed by their
deputy with the same outcome,
it needs to change.
The world of manufacturing
has one advantage, reckons
MacKillop: “Table-top exercises
are useful and have their place.
But in manufacturing you have
an opportunity to actually
carry out ‘real’ tests of your
arrangements, so use it.”
A tale of two phones
It’s hard to give examples of
situations that might have been
improved with a BCP as few
organisations actually want to
shout about the times when
they came close to catastrophe.
That said, MacKillop points
out what happened to Nokia
and Ericsson, who had two very
different approaches to supply
chain management. “After a
fire at a Phillips microchip
plant (a supplier to both
Nokia and Ericsson) in New
Mexico in 2000, their differing
contingency arrangements and
responses saw the outcome
vary dramatically for both
organisations,” he says. “So
much so, that Ericsson ended
up merging with Sony, losing
hundreds of millions in lost
sales, while Nokia stole a huge
amount of market share and
cemented themselves as one
of the major players in the
booming mobile phone sector.”
Make sure, then, that you
learn from Ericsson’s mistake,
or face the consequences…
Creating a
BCP-focused
business culture
is vital
38 www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
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