Can you ensure business continuity in a manufacturing emergency?

Everything depends on manufacturing. From cash flow to contracts, the health of your operations relies on a smooth production process. But, emergency outages and maintenance — planned or unplanned — are a fact of life. With the potential to send your manufacturing skidding.

That’s why, in manufacturing, continuity is king. Your ability to run continuously keeps the supply chain running at an efficient, cost-effective pace — and your business afloat.

When you have time and money on the line, contract obligations up in the air and products at risk of loss, what can you do to ensure business continuity?

How can you not only prevent disaster but keep your manufacturing humming despite it?

Here are three ways to ensure business continuity during the most common, and pressing, production problems.

1. Reduce downtime during emergency outages with a continuity plan

Outages can feel like the bogeyman of the manufacturing world: always lurking around the corner. Ready to strike at any time, from anywhere.

But while the reality is certainly more logical — equipment fails over time, and the chances of failure increase with age — the fear is real.

One random emergency can cause damaging ripples for weeks: expensive downtime leads to production logjam, failed fulfilments and more. And these problems can quickly snowball into one big, ugly albatross. Taking months to fix, if at all.

Enter continuity plans, the best way to stop these problems before they spiral out of control.

Continuity plans can keep production on track, avoid surprise costs and significantly reduce downtime. We’ve seen plants with a continuity plan get back to business within the hour. 

What should a manufacturing continuity plan include?

• An employee safety protocol: The safety and security of your employees is your most urgent and important concern. Anything from a faulty wire to a loose screw can trigger an equipment malfunction — and a hazardous working environment. Organize an employee safety protocol, including headcounts, communication goals and an evacuation plan.
• A preservation plan for perishable products: Anything that is perishable or dependent on temperature, humidity or sterility is at immediate risk of damage. When an emergency interferes with your continuity, the last thing you or your customers need is to lose the product you already have ready-to-go. After employees, prioritize your product.
• A go-to temporary HVAC and power provider: You need to be able to contact a temporary utilities solution immediately. Work with a service that can swiftly and successfully diagnose, design and deploy a solution. This will be your biggest step to stopping downtime in its tracks.
• Customer outreach: Your customers depend on you. When outages get in the way of their expectations, your best line of defense is open, honest and prompt communication. Tell them what’s causing the delay, what you’re doing to solve the problem and when you expect to be back in business.
• Directions for transporting and installing equipment: Every plant has its own unique layout. And every piece of equipment has its own installation hurdles. Have hard-copy directions to both transport and install every piece of important equipment. This will make it easy to onboard temporary equipment and reduce ample downtime.

2. The two-step approach to overcome unplanned maintenance

Everyone accounts for maintenance. It is, after all, one of the best ways to extend the life of your equipment and preserve the integrity of your production.

But what about unplanned maintenance? How can you prevent a setback — or a shutdown?

The secret to containing unplanned maintenance to a simple fix — versus a massive undertaking — is two-fold:

1. Have a robust, ongoing maintenance protocol to catch potential maintenance problems before they happen.
2. Rent temporary equipment to prevent last-minute shutdown, reactionary overspending and production delays.

Oftentimes, unplanned maintenance can feel like a widespread problem, when in reality it's the product of an isolated incident. This encourages the tendency to overcorrect — and end up doing more damage to your business than the initial problem itself.

By taking a proactive approach to maintenance, you don’t just put out small fires early. You also develop a better feel for how your equipment works, plus how it fits in your production system.

3. Temporary utilities help avoid downtime during scheduled maintenance

While scheduled maintenance is a healthy task, a full-scale shutdown can be a thorn in the side for your employees, customers and operations. Why? Because every shutdown guarantees downtime — and lots of it.

Or does it?

Whether you need to modernize your production, move to a new plant or take care of an urgent matter in your manufacturing process, you’ll likely face a shutdown sooner or later.

But a planned shutdown doesn’t have to mean planned downtime and lost productivity. With temporary supplemental utilities, you can effectively power, cool and dehumidify your business-critical equipment to maintain full functionality during a scheduled shutdown. 

Temporary supplemental utilities come in several shapes and sizes:

• Full-scale, temporarily cooled and powered backup facilities
• Individually powered processes within the manufacturing chain
• Remote units, like temporary process-cooled storage 
• 1:1 temporary replacements

And more. All allowing you to execute a planned shutdown without the repercussions.

Final thoughts

Conventional wisdom would tell you extended downtime is inevitable in manufacturing. With unplanned maintenance, shutdowns and emergency outages being the biggest culprits.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. From taking a proactive approach to continuity to the proper execution of temporary power and HVAC, you can weather any obstacle in your production’s way. Without missing a beat.

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