[FADCA] Emergency communications.

[Bill Sinbine]

I got this message from another list and wanted to share it with everyone...

Bottom line that you need to think about is are WE ready? Can we be ready??



http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/19/
fixing_government_after_katrina?mode=PF

Fixing government after Katrina
By Yossi Sheffi  |  September 19, 2005

THE RESPONSE of government to Hurricane Katrina is being dissected to
determine why the initial reaction was lackadaisical even though officials
knew the disaster was coming. One reason could be the culture of the
organizations involved. If this root cause is not addressed systematically
then all the special commissions, forecasting tools, special gear, and
training available will not fix the problem. And there are plenty of
examples in the corporate world to serve as a guide.

Over the last three years, a team of MIT researchers has been studying the
resilience of corporations in crisis situations. The team studied many
examples of organizations that ''made it" when disaster struck, as well as
those that faltered. And there are numerous examples of both kinds.
Following a fire in a Philips Chip plant in Albuquerque, N.M., in March
2000, Ericsson had to exit the cell phone market while Nokia increased its
market share, even though both depended on the chips from the struck plant.
After the 1999 Taiwan earthquake that disrupted the island's chip
manufacturing and 40 percent of the world's chip supplies, Apple Computers
stumbled while Dell kept increasing its market share. And Chiquita was able
to recover much faster than Dole from Mitch, the hurricane that devastated
Latin America in 1998.

The more resilient organizations were better prepared and had designed their
supply chains with greater flexibility in mind. Close examination, however,
also showed that such companies have something in their DNA that makes them
more resilient, a certain corporate culture that helped them survive and
even strive:

Empowerment of front-line employees. While it is well-known that production
line employees in Toyota factories have the authority and responsibility to
stop the line when they see a quality problem, it is less known that any
sailor on the deck of a US carrier has the right and responsibility to stop
flight operations when they detect a developing problem. Front-line
employees are close to the action and can assess what is needed; as a
disruption develops there is usually not enough time to go through the usual
chain of command.

Constant communications. Resilient enterprises communicate obsessively and
ensure that they can communicate in a disaster. Constant communication
allows employees to know the state of the system when disaster strikes and
emergency communications allow for the recovery efforts. Thus, Intel keeps
an emergency center in each region of the world where it is doing business
and each center is equipped with landline telephones, cell phones, SSB
communications, satellite phones, Internet connections, and even
globe-spanning ham radios. But resilient organizations not only have the
gear; they create the environment in which communications are important and
bad news travels fast.

The big picture. Employees in resilient enterprises are passionate about
their mission and care deeply about what they do. Don Schneider, chairman of
the largest truckload company in the US, Schneider National, explains to his
20,000 associates that they are not really in the trucking business. As
transportation enters the cost of every item sold, efficient, low-cost
trucking reduces the price and increases availability of products. Thus,
Schneider is really in the business of raising the living standards of US
consumers. At UPS, employees are keenly aware of how dependent their
customers are on timely deliveries and thus ''nobody goes home until all the
packages are delivered" regardless of disruptions.

The response to Katrina demonstrated how woefully unprepared the government
was at all levels. Instead of taking decisive actions, city, state and
federal officials argued with one another; communications broke down, and
too many civil servants, from New Orleans police officers to Louisiana state
officials to FEMA directors, did not have the urgency or the passion
required.

What has to be done is strikingly obvious -- instill a radical change in
organizational culture. Will this largely avoidable tragedy change the
culture of the organizations involved? We can only hope.

Yossi Sheffi is a professor of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, where he heads the Center for Transportation and Logistics.



Think about it .....
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

73, Bill Sinbine
n4xeo at bellsouth.net