IT Building Blocks: Crisis Management Plan

In designing an IT system, the company must determine the scope of product involved with lot size or batches for finished products. It is beneficial to minimize the scope of product for each batch or lot by having a method to segregate and distinguish products in commerce. The system should account for incoming materials including packaging. An ability to cross-reference the supplier’s lot numbers in the system is a necessity. It should have capabilities to account for samples of research and development, sales, shelf life, retained production, rework, employee sales, donations, and the company store. The system should define the lot start and end point, most likely correlating with a sanitation cycle.

Accuracy

Time is not the only factor in the crisis management process; accuracy of the information provided is instrumental to making decisions as it relates to the safety of the products in commerce. The company must consider impact to its brand if it cannot provide a confident scope of implicated products for its customers in a short period of time. For instance, if a company believes the product in question is one code date or lot, but later finds it had rework used on other code dates or lots, it must then make a notification that it has expanded the recall. Having clear and concise messaging for the distribution channels and consumers is key to getting a resolution, terminating the recall and preventing it from becoming a crisis. This means less production interruptions and a better chance of maintaining consumer confidence in the company brand.

Knowing the company lot coding system is an important validation within your IT system. Many companies manufacture products over a 24 hour time period. Decisions need to be made to determine if the day or lot code changes at midnight or at the next shift. This means the company has to validate that all records and systems are in sync with the determined lot change period. Not doing this can create uncertainty of the lots in commerce if trying to resolve customer complaints or tracing products related to an alleged issue.

In my experience, I have encountered a supplier that reported having a single day code of recalled product. When reviewing the records, it was found that the lot in question had been produced after midnight and marked with a new day code. The company needed to report this added day code to its distribution chain as this code needed to be traced and recalled. It was then determined the suspect product had been used as rework in other products. The scope of the recall went from one single product with a single lot code to a large variety of products with multiple day codes affected within 24 hours. The delay in getting this recalled from the start of the process allowed more affected products to be consumed resulting with a greater food safety risk. Needless to say, many long days and nights were spent trying to reconcile the recalled items. The company brand reputation was affected but did recover. Recovery of brand reputation can take time and affect the viability of the business.

Response Factors

When dealing with a crisis, a company needs to consider a reaction based on the available information and develop an immediate response. Factors to consider include the following.

• Are consumers at risk?
• Is the cause of the problem known?
• Is the lot number and product identified?
• Are there samples available for testing?
• Where has the issue taken place?
• Are the affected products within company control?
• How much was produced?
• When was it produced?
• Where did the product ship?
• Who received these products?
• How much did they receive?
• Do they still have the product?

Being prepared and testing your crisis management program provides your company with valuable insight to possible gaps in your plan and IT systems. Many companies perform product traceability exercises but do not go through a full scenario, testing their crisis plan to include senior management decision making and forming their response to the scenario. Taking time now to review these programs will provide more assurance that your company’s programs are strong. If there comes a time when the programs are needed, your company will have a better chance of a positive outcome if the crisis is handled correctly.