Secrets to minimizing business interruption for manufacturers
Developing a disaster preparedness plan is key for manufacturers to reduce equipment and business losses.
For manufacturers, equipment is often the largest capital expense — possibly worth more than the building itself. When disaster strikes, the first few hours can be crucial to the preservation and future reliability of the impacted equipment. Ask yourself this: In the event of a disaster, do you and your team know what to do to preserve your assets? Do you know who to call to restore your equipment? When equipment is as valuable as that in the manufacturing industry, the answer to these questions should be “yes.”
A disaster preparedness plan not only prepares you for the worst-case scenario, it gives you peace of mind knowing that if and when something happens, you will be able to take immediate action to not only restore your equipment but also minimize business interruption.
Every day, businesses rely on equipment to support their operations. For manufacturers, many of which rely heavily on custom equipment and machinery, when machines are not operating, businesses start losing money immediately. Until a solution is found to meet production goals, the manufacturer will continue to lose money. At the same time, the manufacturer could also face potentially devastating employee turnover and a decreased customer base. Even a few machines at a small manufacturing plant can cause a loss of more than a million dollars, which can truly devastate any business.
While you cannot predict when disaster will strike, developing a disaster preparedness plan beforehand will give you the ability to take immediate action to get your business back up and running.
The two-step disaster preparedness plan
Preparing a disaster preparedness plan can seem overwhelming. To simplify things and get it started, you could break it down into two simple steps.
The first step is to identify your internal stakeholders. Every business will differ in terms of who their stakeholders are, but typically they include individuals from HSEQ, site-service, engineering and risk management.
Once you have identified the internal stakeholders, the next step will be to locate a trusted equipment recovery expert. When it comes to stabilizing and preserving your equipment, time is of the essence. The longer it takes to get restoration experts on-site to assess the equipment and extent of the damage, the higher the likelihood that replacement will be necessary, resulting in soaring costs and extensive lead-time, making this a vital component of any well-developed disaster preparedness plan.
Broadening your disaster plan
Once you identify your internal stakeholders and your equipment recovery expert, you could just stop there. However, to reap the benefits of a true disaster preparedness plan and minimize business interruption, you and your technical recovery expert can do a few more things to develop your plan further.
One of the most important things that you can develop with your recovery expert is an awareness campaign for facility managers and their decision-makers. Should an incident occur, your team would have the necessary protocols in place to handle the situation effectively. We know that time is of the essence when it comes to equipment restoration.
During the first few hours following an incident, while your experts are heading to the site, simple and effective equipment preservation techniques to minimize equipment damage can be performed. In preparing the awareness campaign, your recovery expert can educate your staff on these preservation techniques, which can include not energizing contaminated equipment until deemed safe to do so, installing dehumidifiers to reduce moisture and applying metal preserving compounds designed to stop or slow down corrosion.
To truly reap the benefits of a disaster preparedness plan, an initial site inspection should be performed. This will give your recovery expert a comprehensive understanding of the facility and equipment while allowing them the ability to take photographic documentation. During the site inspection, your recovery expert can also document a detailed inventory of all equipment, drastically reducing recovery time following an incident. This task alone can sometimes take days to accomplish and involve a number of people. Performing this documentation ahead of time will allow your recovery expert to get straight to the recovery.
It is a known fact that everyday use will cause normal wear and tear on equipment. Another option in your preparedness plan is to perform baseline wipe samples that will show the current state of your equipment. After an incident and once your equipment has been successfully restored, your recovery expert would take another set of wipe samples to compare and prove that the equipment has been restored to its pre-loss condition.
Manufacturers rely heavily on their equipment, and downtime is simply unacceptable. Unfortunately, you cannot predict when disaster will strike, and when it does, every minute counts. By developing a disaster preparedness plan, you will be able to take immediate action to restore your equipment and reduce business interruption.
Scott Carroll (Scott.Carroll@arepa.com) is the global sales director for AREPA, located in the Chicago office. Carroll has over 20 years’ experience in disaster recovery and specialty cleaning projects.
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