Emergency Plans

Many companies lose money every day because they are not paying attention to the wastes that are all around them. These are easy to ignore, but end up costing you money in the long run. Wastes come in all shapes and sizes, but in the end, they all do damage. Some just do the damage a little quicker than others. Even though there are different types of wastes, each one boils down to one thing-you losing money.
It does not matter if you are losing money on the front end or the back end, or if you are losing money in labor or materials, the point is that you are losing it somewhere. The trick or the opportunity is to identify the waste before it gets out of control and then correct the problem. How do you detect waste? All you have to do is look around. Waste is all around us, from the process used to make those parts you are selling, to the extra labor that's standing idle because the machine is broken, waste is always near.
You need to be able to reduce the waste. One of the greatest areas of waste is downtime. This can be while a machine is being repaired or if it is just down for routine maintenance. But if it's down for routine maintenance, then there should be a backup plan so that the waste is minimal. These kinds of things should be scheduled well ahead of time and at convenient times when they will do the least amount of damage to production.
If a machine is broken or there is an emergency, there should be a contingency plan in place. This means that there should be parts ready to go or at least a plan to move forward towards fixing the problem. All of these plans should be known by everyone involved and if there are various plants, with the same types of machines, then the plans should be uniform and the same in all locations.
Having standardized practices for emergencies and processes is a must in order to have them go smoothly and to keep things moving forward. This way, the training is all standardized and every plant knows exactly how to react when a particular situation arises, regardless of what location it happens. These plans needs to be written down with clear, concise steps and everybody involved should know them.