We spend a lot of time talking about solving pre-existing problems with asset tracking technology, detailing the ways it can help solve issues that your company might be currently facing. But isn’t it better to be prepared for problems before they arise? It’s important to secure these processes to prevent future upsets and minimize disruptions when issues inevitably arise. That’s why it’s important to pay attention to and spend time building operational resilience.
What is Operational Resilience?
Operational resilience is a form of risk management based on how well a business network can resist complications, how effectively it can adapt to market shifts, and how quickly it can recover from disruptions. It relies on predictive planning and trend awareness to inform business decisions that can withstand unexpected conditions while maintaining control over daily operations and retaining productivity.
One form of operational resilience that is often discussed is supply chain resilience. This serves as an apt example, as the importance of a resilient supply chain is readily apparent within the context of current events. Supply chains are currently under a lot of strain for a number of reasons, including rising operational prices, equipment shortages, labor shortages, geopolitical factors, and a lot more. Much of these effects can be traced back to COVID-19, with the supply chain simply never fully recovering from the global crisis. Certainly, circumstances are in many ways better than they once were. Still, they have yet to achieve their ideal, leaving many companies to reassess their business processes and risk management plans.
In conditions such as the ones demonstrated above, the companies that already have resilience plans in place or that are able to implement new ones quickly are the ones that manage to stay afloat. They are the ones that can continue functioning at a viable capacity, retain their customers, and continue turning a profit. This illustrates the importance of not just addressing challenges as they arise but also implementing a process that helps you shield your company from the challenges associated with a fluctuating global market in the first place.
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How Having a Resilience Plan Supports Your Company
It’s easy to overlook the importance of goals like establishing a resilience plan. There are, after all, more pressing matters. Unexpected complications are sure to arise regularly as a part of everyday business. Why should you spend your valuable time preparing for an uncertain eventuality?
You should because your time is valuable. For every unexpected situation that arises, there is time spent dealing with that situation. Many problems, including the ones we regularly focus on in our blogs, are largely contained within the company itself. But that isn’t the case with all challenges. As demonstrated in the supply chain example, social, economic, and geopolitical contexts often affect a business's operations. Your company does not have the power to change those things. The most you can do is mitigate the effects by reshaping your operations to better suit the circumstances. When those circumstances change, you must do it again, and so on. It requires constant awareness of both market conditions and global trends and knowledge of what is likely to affect them.
A resilience plan aims to minimize the amount of reactionary planning that goes into dealing with both the complications that occur within your company and the larger world. Certainly, this means spending time upfront making a plan, but it also means that you are prepared should the worst happen. This planning minimizes the time in which productivity, profits, and reputation suffer because the plan is made before the problem occurs rather than after, allowing it to be enacted immediately. Further, reactionary problem-solving might be viable for some challenges within the company, but it is often a lot more difficult when problems come from outside your business’s direct influence. By the time the proper research and planning are conducted to address these circumstances, they might have already shifted again, leaving you right back where you started. This means that you are forced to endure the worst of those conditions and once again have more work on your plate. Having a resilience plan in place ahead of time – and making sure to reassess that plan continuously – is a much more effective approach.
Using Asset Visibility to Inform Resilience Plans
In order to enact reliable resilience plans, you need to understand both your current and historical operations and the factors that regularly impact those operations. Asset tracking provides the all-around visibility needed to maintain these records. From raw inventory and production to storage and distribution, an asset tracking solution can help you retain visibility of both manufacturing and logistics operations.
This information can guide your resilience plan by helping you establish a baseline. What is the normal functioning of your company? What are the resources that you usually have at your disposal? How long do certain processes take? What types of challenges tend to have the most impact on daily operations? By answering these questions, you can identify problems you should keep an eye on and provide you with the standard you should maintain, if not improve upon.
Whether you’re looking to address current operational challenges or enhance the resilience of your daily operations, Link Labs provides an asset tracking solution that can help you achieve your manufacturing and logistics operations goals. If you want to learn more about our system and how it can work for you, book a demo today.
