How to Prepare Your Supply Chain For Natural Disasters

Hurricane season has announced its arrival with Dorian on the scene in Florida. Nothing gets us out of our summer beach lounges faster than than the thought of prepping for Mother Nature’s wrath.

Whether it’s hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or earthquakes, natural disasters can have a huge impact on our everyday lives, especially if you work in logistics. 

The supply chain never sleeps, and packages need to get to their final destination, no matter what. How can you prep your supply chain to save money, stay safe and get back up and running again as fast as possible after a disaster strikes?

Here are some basic tips you can use to ride out the storm.

Undertake an impact analysis

An impact analysis is a detailed study of your supply chain and the “weak links”, so to speak. Basically, you want to dissect the areas that are most vulnerable to disruption. This is important so you can pinpoint exactly how you’ll plan for recovery in lieu of a disaster by developing cost effective strategies.

Speaking of recovery plan...

Get a recovery plan in place, pronto.

This will be the action plan after a disaster. You need to sit down with your logistics team to discuss the roles of each person. Who will make the emergency calls? Where will everyone go? What critical tasks must be addressed before anything else?

Keep hard copies

All of that electronic and hard copy documentation needs to be backed up and stored at another safe location. 

Practice makes perfect

Once you have a recovery plan in place, don’t just let it collect dust and be forgotten. Hold periodic meetings to go over the plan, highlighting each specific role and who has the best skill set to handle the role in question. Hold mock drills, so everyone working the supply chain has an idea of what to expect and how to act.