Gretchen Kinder, vice president, Plastic Design Corporation (PDC)
Disaster is, disaster is, disaster, and getting caught up in the hype of the next big catastrophe will undermine the best disaster mitigation plan of any organisation. As long as managers recognise that they really only have two problems to contend with, they will be immune to the false premise that there are any unknown or untried threats. Don’t you feel so much better already?
With that good news out of the way, I am sorry to report that as niche manufacturers we live in two worlds. Both highly specialised materials and tools are essential to our trades, potentially making the pressure on these items less severe. However, we also need a lot of the same commodity items our competitors and the rest of the world rely on.
The advantages that are inherent in our micro industry of specialised manufacturing and the disadvantages of needing to jostle for materials along with commodity manufacturers (and often unrelated industry demands) dictate a vigilant understanding of the multiple disciplines of ‘making and moving’.
At PDC, we are lucky to have strong, personal bonds with our professional counterparts. For the most part, this is because there are so few of us. The benefit is that we are given a fair amount of insight into the production of our specialty tools and materials. This intimacy grants us a more comprehensive picture of what our vendors require to make the supplies we can’t live without as well as accurate information to base disaster mitigation decisions on.
A significant challenge can be when to ‘launch’ your disaster mitigation plan. One tends to expect an obvious event that dictates this call to arms, but as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the failure to appreciate the potential for disruption can be crippling.
Unlike the medical world, the disasters that affect manufacturing present the same symptoms regardless of the injury or illness. How lucky are we in manufacturing that we only have the universal symptoms of either ‘I need it but can’t get it’ or ‘I have it but can’t supply it to my customer’. It’s an interesting phenomenon that the myriad of causes of distress can still only trigger two issues. This gift of limited outcomes helps when establishing your disaster mitigation plan and makes identifying when to launch very simple.
So, when should you pull the trigger on your disaster mitigation plan? Sometimes it’s pretty obvious. Natural disasters come on violently and rarely afford us the luxury of a warning shot over the bow. The 2011 tsunami in Japan is an excellent example of a ‘one day you have it, the next you don’t’ situation. With this tragedy, there was no guessing if it was time to initiate your disaster mitigation plan. If you needed a component or raw material from Japan, you were scrambling within hours of the news reports. In the cases of both the 2011 and 2019 disasters, PDC was confronted with the ‘I need it but can’t get it’ problem. PDC is dependent on custom-built small tools and raw materials from Japan. Failure to procure either would affect starting a new project or completing finished goods. Both our Alpha and Omega were at risk. However, regardless of where in your production the potential for disruption occurs, it’s still only one problem.
But what about when it’s less obvious? What if we aren’t granted the immediate footage of destruction by the major news outlets? Is the next crisis you are going to face buried deep on page 6 of section B in The Times? Civil unrest is a potential cause of supply chain shortcomings. The occasional coup in Thailand or transit strike in France have as much potential to cause disaster as an earthquake. Streets clogged with protestors or trains sitting in stations both equate to personnel not getting into their offices and factories, and this means you are vexed by potential shortcomings. Pulling in a supply order two weeks early buys you the time for letting things sort themselves in foreign lands without having to go lie down in your own back yard. The same ‘symptoms’ can be caused by border disputes and sabre-rattling among hostile nations. When global leaders begin to focus on hostilities, the rest of the nation follows them, and this could result in force majeure situations. They may never fire a shot, but a level of disruption can ensue. A trick to staying ahead of these sleeper events is to subscribe to daily, online newsletters. A review of the headlines will help to keep you on top of potential issues.
The weather is another slow burn event. As I write this, there is severe flooding occurring in regions of Germany and Belgium. Germany is a supplier of highly technical, high-tolerance components that our micro world is very dependent on. The facility your components are made in may have been on high ground but what about their workers? Those clouds didn’t build overnight. Weather forecasting is hardly perfect, but it does afford a certain degree of accuracy that a good manager can act on. Too much of a good thing can cause an event as well. The blazing heat delivered by a severe high-pressure system can trigger rolling blackouts that should also trigger your disaster mitigation plan.
The COVID-19 pandemic is an excellent example of a disaster that moved at the speed of a herd of turtles. The stories coming out of China about the new SARS virus were everywhere as early as late December, but most corporations didn’t start to move their disaster mitigation plans forward until mid-March. The cop out excuse of the ‘unprecedented’ nature of the pandemic was shameful.
In late January, when COVID-19 was still a problem for Asia and the rest of the world was watching the goings on with a morbid curiosity, PDC chose to assume the worst. We triggered our disaster mitigation plan the same morning that Japan recorded 25 cases. Why this number of cases and in this country? Simple, the lessons of the 2011 tsunami. The only difference between the 2011 and 2019 disasters is that in the case of the latter we were given the opportunity to get out ahead of the potential problem.
It is appropriate to add cyber-attacks to the list of events that can cause you to suddenly need to engage your disaster mitigation plan. The problem with this form of event, however, is the lack of transparency between the attacked and those they service. Companies are ashamed and panicked when they face these stealthy ambushes. At first blush, cyber-attacks on companies and infrastructure appear to be new phenomena; however, they closely mirror the challenges of doing business with companies in information-controlled nations. The commonality is that rarely do you receive timely or adequate decision-making information. In both instances, you won’t know there was a problem until it’s too late to get out ahead of it. In these instances, you react, which is hardly ideal.
The misinformation and silence, which are frequently common in the above examples, have the potential to cripple your operations. Limited visibility should cause concern. If you can’t get straight answers on the sunniest of days, when problems arise it will only get worse when the rain of misfortune begins to fall. Unless you have a good ally within the company (or nation) you are dealing with, one that is forthright with useful information, you are very dependent on the old adage: “If this is true, what else is true?”
The “If this is true, what else is true” mentality allows a manager to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. Facts may help you begin to sniff out the existence of a problem but bridging the known to the unknown requires the use of assumptions usually formed by years of experience. This is a place where unmeasurable intuition is king. If your most recent order of let’s say speciality packing materials was late and nobody is returning your emails, the odds are that the next order is going to be late as well. That’s an easy conclusion to reach. Hopefully, we are always that lucky. Anecdotal information can also help you put together a picture of what you are up against but remember that in the end it’s really only one of two problems, ‘I need it but can’t get it’. So, count your blessings.
It was a major failure of upper management not to relay to managers that COVID-19 challenges needed to be addressed with the aggressiveness adopted in 2011. The early onset of 2020 left the world jostling for personal protection equipment (PPE); the same things doctors, nurses and first responders needed, cleanrooms also needed. We were lucky that we were able to find what we needed in those first few days but convincing some people in our organisation that these normally single-use items needed to be guarded and carefully allocated took some doing. In January, there were only a few cases on US soil. Most of the country was untouched by COVID-19. The lack of news images of destruction that we are all conditioned to signal disaster were missing until late February and early March. This made it more difficult to produce the evidence needed to get an easy buy-in with others in the organisation.
Risk mitigation exercises are exhausting, yet crucially important for meeting the demands of your customers. If you focus on the fact that there are only two problems to address, your job is gloriously basic. Revel in that. Be vigilant in your absorption of local and global events, especially those in areas that are critical to your organisation. These exercises will give you that all-important head start on the scramble for supplies. There is a heroism to them. Convey your gratitude to your team and march on.
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