Management

This assignment is due at the end of week 5. Business Continuity Planning is another tool used to measure and understand an organization’s supply chain risk. Review the Business Continuity Planning Assessment Questionnaire in Appendix A of the Kildow text. Consider your organization’s business continuity plan, if any, and evaluate the organization using the Kildow template in Appendix A. You may choose an organization other than the one where you are working or have worked. You may average the scores obtained from the categories to provide a 500-word overview on your assessment. If your organization is not conducive to a business continuity assessment, you may select any organization which you are either familiar with or can conduct research.

ANSWER

Axis Flour Millers Business Continuity Risk Assessment

The company chosen for the continuity plan assessment is a partnership company located in Illinois, Chicago. It is a wheat flour milling company that owns some wheat farms but relies mainly on buying the grain from large scale farmers.

The company has been in operation for the past three years and is doing good when it comes to profit. Over the past two years, its growth rate has been in operation stands at 48%, and it registered adequate liquidity in the first and second quarters of 2020.

Purpose

The aim of conducting the risk assessment was to identify potential risks to the continuity of Axis Flour Millers. The process involved assigning ratings to risks and identifying ways to alleviate the risks.

Scope

The risk assessment was carried out using Kildow’s risk assessment tool, which covers leadership, logistics, supply, manufacturing, industry, customer demand, integrated supply chain, information system, sales, and operations planning (S&OP) processes, and balanced scorecard.

The tool has a rating scale of 1 to 10, where any score between 1-4 means the risk associated with that parameter is low, 5 to 7 means the risk is medium, and 8 to 10 means the risk is high.

The Risks Identified

From the assessment, two factors were identified as the major threats to Axis continuity. Leadership was identified as the highest inherent risk with a rating of 8. The risk associated with leadership was pegged mainly on the availability and accessibility of information. Information is essential for the continuity of business and should, therefore, be available and freely communicated (Imperva, 2019). All leadership levels ought to be well informed of the strategic directions and data indicating the performance levels in achieving the strategy (Imperva, 2019). In the case of Axis, it was established that the company is operating on a “need-to know basis,” and only a few people have access to information.

The second identified risk was under industry, which scored six on the scale. This parameter was used to gauge the impact of the industry’s risk handling on the business. Companies, in particular geographical locations, were considered more risk-prone. The biggest risk concern, risk approach, risk organization, supplier alignment, and risk practices were all measured under this parameter, and the average score constituted the industry risk score. The weak link was found to be the industry’s risk approach, risk practices, and risk organization. The industry’s risk approach focuses more on response to crises rather than the recommended prevention of the same. Best risk practices require the industry and the company to monitor global events, simulate the company’s scenarios, and run global risk dashboards (Kádárová& Durkáčová, 2012). However, in Axis’s case, the industry and company monitor global events but only use that to evaluate suppliers. Risk organization requires that industries and companies should have a risk manager (Kádárová& Durkáčová, 2012). Contrary to this requirement, Axis and the industry have none.

Conclusion

The business continuity plan risk assessment was aimed at unearthing the factors that Axis is exposed to that threaten its continuity as a business. It was also meant to identify the likelihood of the occurrence of such threats, and the impact they are likely to have on the business should they occur. Th assessment proved the existence of threat to Axis and demonstrated that some of these risks are of high criticality. In order to minimize the number of potential risks, it would be prudent that the company mitigates the highly critical risks. The company should also give priority to conducting regular assessments so as to deal with any existing and imminent threats.

References

Business continuity & disaster recovery planning (BCP & DRP) | Imperva. (2019, December 30). Imperva. https://www.imperva.com/learn/availability/business-continuity-planning/

Kádárová, J., & Durkáčová, M. (2012, January). Risk management in industrial companies. In 2012 IEEE 10th International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics (SAMI) (pp. 415-419). IEEE.