Downtime interrupts production and can have a high financial impact.
There are several things you can do to be proactive, including assessing your operations and processes; taking inventory of your machinery and software; creating an action plan; establishing a relationship with a certified service provider; and putting together a budget. One additional thing you can do to best be prepared to handle downtime when it occurs is communicate and test your planned responses (your action plans). Any plan can look great on paper, but if you want to know if it will work when you need it the most, you better make sure everyone knows what the plan is and then try it.
DOCUMENT & COMMUNICATE
If you’ve gone through all those preventative measures, you’ve taken ridiculous amounts of notes. There’s no shortage of documentation acquired from your assessment on your critical equipment and processes; your inventory; or your budget. The certified service provider you’ve been working with, probably also provided a report or summary of recommendations at some point.
So, what do you do now with all this information? Weed out the unnecessary info and boil it down to your response procedures (your action plans when downtime happens). Make those procedures presentable and clear. Now, provide them to key stakeholders for review, but give them plenty of time to consume the material and think about their feedback. Set a meeting to allow these team members to bring their thoughts and suggestions to the table. Following the meeting, incorporate the most constructive feedback into your plan before you move to testing.
TEST
Find a safe and secure way to test the plan without interrupting production. Ensure you have any buy-in from supervisory/management team leaders if needed. Set a test schedule and notify all other impacted parties in advance. This includes your certified service provider if you’re anticipating calling them on site to be a part of the test.
Consider identifying two observers/recorders – just to watch how the test goes. The role these individuals play is to watch while the response team walks through the action plan and note any items that could use tweaking. When you’re thinking about who to select for the roles of observer/records, consider one person who has no intimate working knowledge of the process or any involvement in creating the response procedure; and then someone who knows the process and the response procedure intimately. Both perspectives will provide valuable insight on how the test went and ways to improve your proposed action plan
REVISE
After the test is over, ask anyone involved for feedback on how the test went. What could have been done differently? What in the documented action plan was either missing or could use more clarity? Who else might have been a valuable person to include?
Revise the action plan based on the feedback and make sure the new version has replaced the older one and is saved where you’ve designated your action plans to be stored. Communicate changes to key players so everyone is made aware.
The more prepared you are, the faster downtime is resolved.
By having a plan that’s been communicated and supported, in addition to being tested, you’ll be:
more prepared to handle the worst-case scenario, manage if effectively, and reduce the time it interrupts business production. So, review all your documentation and make it presentable and digestible for others. Get their perspectives, thoughts, and feedback. Then, test your plans and revise them needed. Contact us here if you need some extra support and guidance.
