Business Continuity For Dummies

Focusing on Manufacturing and BC

For your manufacturing business, BC is about ensuring that products continue to reach customers regardless of any problems you experience along the production line. Your mantra needs to be: ‘Even if I have a problem, my customers don’t.’

Your inputs are the raw materials or parts that you turn into your outputs (the goods or finished products you supply to others). BC is simply about continuing to deliver the outputs no matter what spanner (metaphorical or literal) gets thrown into the works.

Therefore, understanding your supply chain is imperative, because as a manufacturer you’re likely to have upstream and downstream worries as part of being a supplier and a customer. (For more about identifying vulnerabilities in your supply chain and positively influencing it, flip to Chapter 6.)

The basic principles of manufacturing involve converting inputs into outputs within a certain timeframe. Usually, some form of labour, tools or equipment is involved along the way to making this happen. To clarify a couple of things:

Components are your inputs – the materials, ingredients or chemicals that you modify in your business processes.

Products are the outputs ...