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Crisis management for manufacturing

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Crisis management for manufacturing can take a number of forms and can be implemented in a number of different situations.For example, crisis management must come into play if your company has to admit to environmental quality control violations, or must answer to a lawsuit.Crisis management is necessary if a flaw in a product or a service is revealed and the news goes to the press and you must recall the product.Also, crisis management becomes necessary if you end up with a union strike, or if your equipment malfunctions, or if you are trying to wage a publicity campaign in a community that doesn't want you to move into their neighborhood.No matter what situation may arise, you must have a good crisis management plan and a good crisis management team in place so that any type of crisis can be handled, no matter what that crisis is.

For an example for our discussion of crisis management for manufacturing, let us use the example of a very important critical piece of equipment failing.Even if you have the best maintenance team in the world, machinery is never foolproof nor perfect, and so something is going to break down sometime.The problem then becomes that your machine is not producing money.You should have a crisis management position in place so that you can minimize the impact on your business, the customers' products, and your credibility.

If you have a critical piece of equipment fail, then you need to ensure that the maintenance team responds immediately to work on the problem.You also need a communications team to communicate with your customers.Your customers deserve to know and need to know the status of what is going on with your production services.You also need a backup plan in place so that you can restart production in case you can't fix your machine quickly enough.In addition, you need an analysis team that can look at how the problem occurred, how to fix it quickly and permanently.Finally, you need a closure team to work with the customer after the repair is made so that the customer feels confident in your abilities and your manufacturing processes.

Have a meeting with your employees to draw up a crisis management response plan.You should have processes in place that ensure immediate response of your maintenance team as soon as the failure is reported.Your communications team should have a press release immediately made, and calls to your major customers should be called so that they know that there may be some delay.Make sure that your employees have a specific way of replying to the situation to the press and to customers.Have team meetings to ensure that all your employees, and particularly your communications team, have a unified front.Make sure that all information is shared within the company, and that the performance measurements are shared within the company.

Once the equipment is repaired, you need to ensure that you repair your relationship with your customer and your reputation.Have a plan in place so that you can work on your reputation with your customer immediately.Assure the customer that you are doing everything possible to protect their business.Having a backup plan with all employees trained in that backup plan will help you ensure that nobody gets stuck on any call or any problem, and it will help your crisis management team get everything back together as quickly as possible.Don't be afraid to try out parallel plans and solutions if your initial solutions and attempts don't really work.Don't try again and again; start working immediately on different approaches to your crisis.

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