Plan for the worst, hope for the best

With the worst of the COVID pandemic firmly in the rear view, RS Connected Thinking review what can be learned to prepare business against large-scale issues in the future

For further considerations and expert guidance to help develop your organisation's manufacturing and maintenance resilience planning, read the full article on the Connected Thinking website.

Despite warnings as far back as 2016, it’s hard to get businesses to invest in measures to mitigate high impact, low probability events, with the Health and Safety Executive succinctly noting that “Every day, consciously or unconsciously, we all view hazards and evaluate their risks to determine which ones we choose to notice, ignore or perhaps do something about.”

Of course, threats don’t have to be global to slow or stop operations, with breakdown of machinery, logistics, infrastructure, fires, extreme weather and civil disruption can also have an impact. Ian Bell, Vice President of Engineering and Facilities at RS Group emphasises the need to plan ahead: “It is absolutely essential, if for nothing else, to give some structure early on,” he says. "It’s essential to keep your plan clear and straightforward.”

Meanwhile, Richard Jeffers, Managing Director of RS Industria at RS Group, suggests this checklist to help you evaluate the resilience of your maintenance engineering processes in the event of an incident:

1. 1. Do you have a maintenance strategy?
2. 2. How strong is your maintenance plan and is everyone following it day to day?
3. 3. What’s your plan based on?
4. 4. Are you making the most of fault reporting to understand your weaknesses?
5. 5. Do you have a disaster recovery plan and is it actionable?
6. 6. Have you thought about what you would be able to do in reality if the worst happened?
7. 7. Do you know which are your critical assets, both operationally and compliance?

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if you are performing world-class maintenance engineering, which is about the relentless identification and eradication of losses, you are setting yourself up to survive a crisis,” says Richard Jeffers.

For further advice to enhance your organisation’s planning, read the full article on the Connected Thinking website.