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When external circumstances like the coronavirus impact business operations, focus on each affected area to control damage.
So many variables can affect your operations. As a business leader, you need to assess sales levels, personnel availability, operational inputs, equipment capacity, work teams, infrastructure quality and technological capabilities. Each of these considerations can impact your ability to achieve production and performance targets.
When a crisis strikes, several problems can surface, including:
- Unpredictable sales volumes, with substantial increases or declines;
- Variations in employee availability, affecting their hours or ability to travel. In some cases, workers may be entirely unavailable;
- Supply chain disruptions;
- Product scarcity or unavailability.
The keys to effective crisis management
If you want to minimize business impacts and maintain an equilibrium, you may need to adjust certain procedures. Carefully evaluate each variable impacting your operations, assess associated risk levels and establish priority actions.
Here’s a summary of what you need to consider.
Dynamic production planning
- Clarify employee availability;
- Assess supply chain issues and how they could impact production;
- Assess your company’s capacity surplus or shortage;
- Determine which tasks aren’t critical to business continuity and eliminate them in priority order;
- Implement a dynamic production planning tool and increase planning cycle frequency;
- Set up tracking mechanisms and schedule frequent checks with the sales team.
Technology optimization
- Use available technologies to run simulations of different scenarios.
Actual cost reviews
- Assess how volume fluctuations are affecting your variable and fixed costs, and determine your breakeven point;
- Develop a plan for reducing fixed costs.
Implementing these actions can help you control costs and improve operations. When combined, small actions can make a big difference. Do the right thing for your business’ future by preparing for the unexpected.
Our operations analysis experts can help you implement fast and effective solutions so that you’ll be ready for whatever lies ahead.