ONCE
IN A LIFETIME
At 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning
I was awakened by the blare of tsunami alarms.
My hotel in Waikiki was threatened by the
tsunami initiated by the earthquake in Chile
the evening prior. We quickly learned that
the phone book includes "inundation area"
maps for each beach section of Oahu. We also
learned that we had 5 hours of additional
prep time, the concept of "vertical evacuation,"
and that throngs gathering a week's worth
of water and food in an overcrowded grocery
store can be calm, polite and orderly.
As most of you now know, the
tsunami turned out to be "much ado about
nothing." But it is much better to be
prepared for a nonevent, than unprepared for
an event. Because of the effective planning
and communication of the Honolulu safety forces,
a larger tsunami would have easily caused
damage in the millions, but would NOT have
resulted in loss of life.
I wonder how hard those safety
forces had to fight for funding to develop
and test the plans put into place Saturday
morning. After all, the chances of a tsunami
are small.
Perhaps a quick look at your
own disaster plans could be useful. Do your
employees know what to do? Do you have access
to employee, customer, and supplier contact
information if your computer systems are unavailable?
Sure, it's unlikely, but...
UPCOMING EVENTS
March 11, 2010:
Tour the Subaru
plant in Lafayette IN as part of the AME workshop:
"Subaru: Committed to Excellence; Committed
to the Environment." See the auto manufacturing
process from start to finish and learn how the
Subaru commitment to safety, the environment,
and quality impacts the process.
March 31, 2010: This is the
last day to receive a 20%
discount for the 2010 AME "Excellence
Inside" annual conference Nov 15-19, 2010.
April 15, 2010: Mail your tax
forms early and invest today seeing Lean
at Medtronic in Warsaw, IN. At this plant,
see the Lean principles applied in a complex machining
and assembly environment. Participants will view
Lean techniques in place on the shop floor and
will get “lessons learned” from the
site’s Leadership Team.
April 19 - 21, 2010: Industry
Week's annual Best
Plants conference will be held in Cleveland,
OH. Keynote, tracks, and preliminary plant tour
information is now available.
May 6, 2010: See an Industry
Weeks Best Plant Winner and one of eleven
LEED-EB sites in the world at this event in Huntington
IN. United Technologies Electronic Controls (UTEC)
opens this facility to you to walk the factory
floor and see where the real action happens! See
real-time process improvement decisions being
made, data tracking and analysis at the process,
not in a conference room! More information available
soon.
Speaking of potential disaster,
how about no snow in Vancouver B.C. for the
long planned Winter Olympics? They had a backup
plan that seemed to work. The same message re:
potential disasters in one week?
FINISH STRONG®
The Starting Pistol
Felix Frankfurter
“Wisdom too often never comes, and so
one ought not to reject it merely because it
comes late.”
The Tape
Rebecca Morgan:
".....so 'we should have had a plan' means
little; a good business manages risk."
TALK WITH FULCRUM
VIA SOCIAL MEDIA
ABOUT
REBECCA A. MORGAN
Rebecca A. Morgan has been an authoritative
voice in business operations for over 30 years.
Founder and President of Fulcrum ConsultingWorks,
Inc. her wide-ranging experience includes operations,
supply chain management, accounting systems, information
systems, strategic planning, consulting and academia.
Rebecca held senior management positions with
Stouffer Foods, TRW, Precision Castparts Corporation,
Cleveland Trust (since acquired by KeyBank) and
Perdue Farms. She also taught undergraduate economics
courses for Salisbury State in Maryland and numerous
manufacturing courses for other colleges and universities.
She has owned and operated her consulting business
since 1990.
Rebecca holds BA and MS degrees in Economics
and has completed additional post-graduate work
in Business Administration. She is Board Approved
in Operations Management by the Society for Advancement
of Consulting and is certified as a Fellow by
The Association for Operations Management (APICS).
She contributes generously of her time to professional
organizations, including current leadership responsibilities
with international groups: The Association for
Operations Management (APICS), the Association
for Manufacturing Excellence(AME) and the Cleveland
OH based Entrepreneurs Association.
In addition to serving as INC Magazine’s
INC.com Operations Expert for several years, Rebecca’s
expertise is frequently tapped by national and
local publications on topics ranging from lean
manufacturing to steel tariffs to B2B relationships.
To learn more, check out http://www.fulcrumcwi.com/ab_rebecca.htm
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