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 Being responsible for a 2 Billion dollar company as the
Quality Process Director, I was the one who management turned to when a major
client sent in a team to conduct a several day to a weeklong wall-to-wall
business process audit.
Most audits focused in three (3) areas:
- Quality
System Requirements
- Software
Quality Management
- Business
Systems and Organization
The clients, who single sourced from our business, always
wanted to visit business system policies and procedures for our "Disaster
Recovery Process" (DRP). The first time a client audited our DRP Business
System requirements, it became evident that work needed to be done.
The first question; "Can we see your disaster recovery
process policies and procedures?". Question two; "Can you show us where in the
policies does it clearly define who in management owns responsibility for the
DRP's periodic review and is responsible for implementation if a disaster does
occur?".
What the client was looking for in simple terms; does the
organization have a plan (process) that key management can turn to if an
unexpected disaster occurs.
 Some of the key topics that they looked for to be included
is a basic Disaster Response Recovery plan include:
- Ownership by management of an organized plan of recovery
for processes that impact their products on-time delivery.
- Management and periodic review of the applicable policies
and procedures and response team training in their area of responsibility.
- Business Systems for control and storage of vital records
- A strategy for replacement of specialized equipment and
tools impacting product manufacture.
- Communication, immediate and on-going for employees,
suppliers, clients and the community that focuses on a joint effort to expedite
an organized effect recovery to full production.
- Confirmation that single source key suppliers have a
disaster recovery program.
- A documented process for rapid damage assessment
- A documented strategy for recovery of critic business
functions
- Plan to move work to another business location if need to
meet client orders.
Editor's Note: CR4 would like to thank Ed Eisermann of GEA Consulting for contributing this blog entry.
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