In March 2005, Goodyear's manager of global business continuity and fire protection, Mike Janko, listened to a presentation about pandemic influenza at a conference. This spurred a discussion upon his return to corporate headquarters in Akron about what Goodyear would do should the H5N1 virus circulating in Asia spark this century's first pandemic influenza. Company leaders agreed this was an important aspect of business continuity and began planning Goodyear's response to an influenza pandemic.
Goodyear operates more than 100 plants in 29 countries with about 80,000 employees. They employee about 5,000 people in Ohio, from the 3,000 working in their Akron offices and technical center in Summit County to the factories in Marysville and St. Marys to its retail outlets across the state.
Identify Key Players
Goodyear's first step in planning for a pandemic was identifying regional leaders around the world who could assist with messages and goals throughout their region and could identify key players in the planning process. Those key players were provided background materials and planning templates with established timelines and deliverables. They participated in regular conference calls and developed tactical teams in their regions to address all aspects of business continuity in the face of a pandemic.The tactical teams consisted of a key member and an alternate for each functional business role. Within two months of forming a global leadership team, Goodyear had detailed plans for 15 countries in Asia.
Key Elements of Goodyear's Pandemic Flu Plan
1) Communications - Ensure the business has the means to reach associates, customers, suppliers and shareholders and that communications are accurate. Communication channels need to be redundant (e.g., having a process for communicating if telephone lines are inoperable). Another aspect of communication is developing relationships within the community before a pandemic. Regular communications with medical experts and local emergency operations centers is suggested.
2) Medical knowledge - It is essential to address medical preparedness, risk reduction and hygiene practices for associates in the workplace and at home with their families. Goodyear follows World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice on social distancing, hand washing and staying home when sick. Goodyear also elected to participate in International SOS, a fee-based service that helps organizations manage the health and safety risks facing their travelers, and follow the International SOS protocols for disinfection. Click here for more information on pandemic preparedness by International SOS.
3) Business resiliency - Strategies to address include ensuring business resiliency models to address both customer needs and supplier raw material sourcing. For Goodyear, each region and facility assessed its operations for responding to a pandemic, identified critical customers and suppliers and established triggers for altering production schedules during a pandemic.
4) Essential functions - Each facility has identified critical functions. For a highly critical function they have focused on critical jobs and tasks and ensured cross training has been provided where redundancy is not yet in place.
Test Your Plans
Once plans were complete, Goodyear's strategy included conducting tabletop exercises to validate the plan and systems. About 170 Goodyear employees from 15 countries participated in a three-hour tabletop exercise to practice implementation of plans for Asia. Shortly afterward, plans from facilities in Africa, Europe and the Middle East faced the same tests.
Goodyear's exercises were facilitated on an Internet meeting space and posed escalating scenarios to the various locations for offline discussion and online report-back. The goal of the exercises was to locate any deficiencies in the response plans and identify other critical incidents that could impact operations, such as volcanoes and earthquakes that threaten some of their plants in Asia. Teams utilize a formal incident command system and have established timelines for correcting plans based on lessons learned in exercises.
Manage Your Plans
The plans for all of Goodyear's tactical teams are centrally coordinated to help facilitate sharing of best practices and ensure the plans do not overlap or conflict with one another. As in any emergency plan, feedback systems should be built in to allow for continuous improvement and updates as situations shift.
"The key is preparation, preparation, preparation," says Janko. "You need to be able to easily answer these questions - What do you do beforehand? How do you address it during the pandemic? Then you have to maintain your focus on recovery, which for a pandemic, could be a long time."
Last Updated July 25, 2006
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