"This process we went through with BCarm was a real eye-opener and has enabled us to put in place numerous measures to protect critical functions for the ongoing performance of the business.
It was also vital to the Management Buyout we completed in June 2016 and has enabled us to compete for major contracts in our sector. We now live and breathe business continuity with regular updates and reviews with BCarm ensuring our continuity arrangements and DR procedures reflect our changing business needs."
Adey are an award-winning company that make magnetic filters for domestic and commercial heating systems.
A review of the Company's business continuity and resilience was initiated by Brunsdon Insurance due to increasing requirements in commercial tenders and the growing complexity of the Business' supply chain and Adey engaged BCarm to support them in the process with both onsite consultancy and management systems.
The Senior Management team was convened to map the business process, including its supply chain and the dynamics of its stock holdings at different parts of their process and to establish the Business' tolerance for disruption - how long could it not deliver its products and services before the Business started to be damaged.
Like many businesses Adey had developed its supply chain criteria which was based primarily on quality, reliability and price, allowing them to produce high quality and award-winning products. Resilience hadn't been considered which had given rise to some single points of failure that could damage the Business should there be an incident at these points in the supply chain.
Through this process and taking in to account competitive forces in their market, Adey established their tolerance for disruption as 4 weeks. This then became one of their Business Continuity Objectives - the ability to reinstate the supply of its products within this time frame regardless where the disruption occurred.
With this business continuity requirement set, each component of their supply chain was then tested against this and a number of continuity and resilience issues became readily identifiable that could then be addressed.
Having reviewed these issues and agreed appropriate continuity strategies, Adey then set about working with its supply chain to look at how these could be achieved. The results of this included:
- Separate warehousing for finished and pre-assembled goods
- A disaster recovery area set aside in the distribution warehouse should there be an incident at their HO
- A reciprocal arrangement with a testing laboratory
- Changes in stock holdings with suppliers
- A move to Office 365
