Can anyone tell me if natural disasters must now be included in contingency plans for TS16949?

Can anyone tell me if natural disasters must now be included in contingency plans for TS16949?

Hi Katheryn,

If your question is based on the TS standard, I would say not necessary but it would be good to include. As you do not want to end up in a business crisis scenario if the plant can't produce.

Again, some customer such as Visteon do acknowledge in the inclusion of natural disaster. See below:

6.3.2V Contingency plans
The organization shall prepare a contingency plan following guidelines available in Annex E. Upon request, the organization shall provide a copy of their contingency plans to Visteon.
The organization shall notify Visteon receiving plants, the buyer and the SDE/SPE of record on Scorecard within 24 hours of organization production interruption. The nature of the interruption shall be communicated with the immediate actions taken to assure supply of product. Production interruptions may include (but are not limited to) natural disasters, political unrest, war, capacity issues, quality issues, labor strikes or other events that prevent the organization from meeting the specified capacity volumes

Reason being they don't want their business to disrupted. Another common threat that is raising fast would the bird flu pandemic which was discussed in another thread. I couldn't remember where. Maybe someone can help to point to that.

So it's all run down to your customers now.

Hope this help. :bigwave:

I haven't ranted for a while......:mad:

We're a die cast/machine/light assembly house. If a tornado, fire, earthquake, etc., would ravage our plant(s) and destry the machinery and tooling - or if our Central Melt furnaces would get water in the metal, blow up, and level the neighborhood - does anyone think we would give a rat's behind about whether GM, Ford, Nissan, or anyone else got product? :bonk:

We recently had a visit from a "VP of Quality" at one of our bigger customers and he brought up that very question - "What would happen if your company got blown away and couldn't meet our schedules? Maybe we should think about that." It was all I could do to keep from rolling on the floor.:rolleyes:

There, I feel better and can go on now....

In all seriousness - if your company is the sole supplier of a product, how could you possibly satisfy (to your customer's liking) the "Natural Disaster" contingency requirement and still keep piece price in line?

We had to answer that in detail also. We stated that we have other plants within the corporation that could produce the parts we currently manufacture. Japan, Brazil, Canada, Michigan, etc.
We have a sales office in Detroit to answer customer calls if we were blown off the map;)

I haven't ranted for a while......:mad:

We're a die cast/machine/light assembly house. If a tornado, fire, earthquake, etc., would ravage our plant(s) and destry the machinery and tooling - or if our Central Melt furnaces would get water in the metal, blow up, and level the neighborhood - does anyone think we would give a rat's behind about whether GM, Ford, Nissan, or anyone else got product? :bonk:

We recently had a visit from a "VP of Quality" at one of our bigger customers and he brought up that very question - "What would happen if your company got blown away and couldn't meet our schedules? Maybe we should think about that." It was all I could do to keep from rolling on the floor.:rolleyes:

There, I feel better and can go on now....

In all seriousness - if your company is the sole supplier of a product, how could you possibly satisfy (to your customer's liking) the "Natural Disaster" contingency requirement and still keep piece price in line?

With all of the bluster about "mutually beneficial relationships" and "partnering" with suppliers, I've often wondered how an OEM would react if a supplier were to ask, "If our plant suddenly burned down, what would you be able to do for us?"

In my normal fashion, I will answer by going back to the standard. It tells us all we need to know. “..in the event of an emergency such as utility interruptions, labour shortages, key equipment failure and field returns.”

So would a natural disaster cause?
1) a utility interruption
2) labor shortages
3) key equipment failure
4) field returns

Well, I’m not sure about field returns, but the other three…. I have a client that received a request from a customer for a contingency plan for bird flu! And what’s worse, the plan must include a bunch of different stuff. Now, INMSHO, the bird flu would probably fall under #2 above. If we had a different plan for each way someone could get sick, we would be in trouble.

This ain’t all that difficult.
:frust:

If you ask an OEM about what they could do for us if we were destroyed......they would write another set of standards for us to meet. ;)

I understand their concern, but we have no control over natural disasters. Companies that have more than one division have more options for covering this type of contingency....maybe...lol

With all of the bluster about "mutually beneficial relationships" and "partnering" with suppliers, I've often wondered how an OEM would react if a supplier were to ask, "If our plant suddenly burned down, what would you be able to do for us?"

Jim

Way back during the ice storm - our plant was down for a week.

All the customers called demanding to know how we were going to get them their parts - all but one. They saw the news and called to ask how we were doing, and see if there was anything they could do to help us and our families. Parts delivery never even came up. A class act.

In my normal fashion, I will answer by going back to the standard. It tells us all we need to know. “..in the event of an emergency such as utility interruptions, labour shortages, key equipment failure and field returns.”

So would a natural disaster cause?
1) a utility interruption
2) labor shortages
3) key equipment failure
4) field returns

Well, I’m not sure about field returns, but the other three…. I have a client that received a request from a customer for a contingency plan for bird flu! And what’s worse, the plan must include a bunch of different stuff. Now, INMSHO, the bird flu would probably fall under #2 above. If we had a different plan for each way someone could get sick, we would be in trouble.

This ain’t all that difficult.
:frust:
I agree with you Dave. My post was more in response to Cheahga's response concerning Visteon's (and others) "refinement" to the standard.

With all of the bluster about "mutually beneficial relationships" and "partnering" with suppliers, I've often wondered how an OEM would react if a supplier were to ask, "If our plant suddenly burned down, what would you be able to do for us?"
Better yet, ask them, "I am your largest supplier of incremental safety enhancement systems components. Since you have imposed all of these standards, price pressure, custom component requirements, etc., I have customized 80% of my business around your business. So, when you totally mismanange your entire corporation, leave your employees high and dry, declare bankruptcy and go out of business, do you have a contingency plan for how I continue to run my business?"

Oh, yeah, I already thought of one: The other 20% of my business operates at 80% margin, since those customers are willing to pay premium prices for premium service and quality (evidenced by how and what we deliver) instead of SQAs, external auditors, etc. and all this other nonsense.:agree1:

Happy Spring Break, everyone! I'm going on vacation for a week and just thought I'd leave you with a little TS rant B4 I go.

In 1993 I was living in Kentucky when a massive snow storm stopped the state dead in its tracks. The interstate freeways were closed for a week, and there was no way to get parts to assembly plants through normal means. For two days we had to repackage our suspension struts into individual boxes and fly them by chartered helicopter to the closest airport where they were airshipped to assembly plants. After two days, someone else shut them down, so we didn't have to ship anymore that way...

You can’t imagine the importance of this issue!
Right now we are working according to a contingency planning due to an occurrence that destroyed totally our plant.
This is what we think it only would happen to the others.
That’s a BIG mistake…

The Contingency Plan is like an airbag, for the organization.
It’s what provides you the chance to survive after a huge accident.
In this plan you should input information that would be helpful and, especially, useful.

You should look at this tool not as one more Customer Requirement to full fill but as an tool that will lead you back to battle.

We had a Contingency Plan that wasn’t prepared for this kind of grade.

So I’m trying to find some examples of Plans to organize mine… Can anyone help me on this?

Thanks.