Read the case study below and answer the following questions.

1. What are some events that Goodyear has experienced? (You may also want to research supporting events for the case study).
2. What are some elements included in their BCP?
3. Why do you think that various staff units were brought together as part of the strategy and response development?
4. Goodyear has implemented the DRII/NFPA 1600 approach. What strategies can be utilized to make sure recovery starts quickly, perhaps even while the incident is ongoing?
5. Once the incident is reviewed and recommendations are implemented, what steps can be taken to make sure the errors of this disaster do not recur?
6. Please explain how the five step collaborate process developed by Goodyear could be applied to other types of disasters and other industries.

Case Study: Using and Adapting NFPA 1600

Goodyear Goodyear1 is the #1 tire maker in the Americas and #2 in Europe. It operates 53 manufacturing plants in 22 countries, plus logistics centers and over 1,000 retail stores. It has 71,000 employees and annual sales of $23 billion. With its corporate headquarters in Akron, Ohio, Goodyear has strategic units and logistics centers in the following regions: Q North America 20 primary sites involved in products from tires and chemicals to airships. Q Europe 17 primary sites across eight countries stretching from France to Slovenia and UK to Luxembourg. Q Middle East and Africa four primary sites, one each in South Africa and UAE, and two in Turkey. Q Latin America seven primary sites in five countries. Q Asia Pacific nine primary sites in seven countries. By 9/11, Goodyear already had key elements of a BC program2 in place or under development based on the DRIIs 10 professional practices and supported by corporate policy and BC charter. These elements included: Q Facility incident response planning. Q Corporate crisis management. Q Crisis communications. Q Disaster recovery processes. NFPA 1600 was used with the DRIIs 10 professional practices to provide the guidelines and model to provide consensus a common model and common terminology.3 Goodyears Global Business Continuity Process brought these existing elements together, with additional functional support teams, including Environmental Health and Safety, Legal, Finance, Human Resources, Risk Management, and others. Strategic Business Unit regional representatives were also identified and this group became known as the Goodyear BC Tactical Team. The DRII/NFPA 1600 approach helped all tactical team members understand the importance of pre-planning internally and with external partners. The BC Tactical Team meets on a monthly basis as part of the education and planning process to be better prepared for planning, responding to, and recovering from, major incidents. Since implementing the program, Goodyear has responded effectively to numerous incidents, including natural events, human caused events (accidental and intentional), and technological-caused events across all strategic business units. These incidents include hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, flooding, work stoppages, power outages, political challenges, and fires.

Lessons-learned from these incidents are developed, shared with all other strategic business units, and used for plan improvement. Goodyear sees every major incident as an opportunity to improve planning on a global basis. Goodyears BC experience and expertise of working with external partners was input to the 9/11 Commission. The resulting report became input to the voluntary standard of Title IX, Private Sector Preparedness. Goodyear also provided input to the US Senate team developing S.4., the Improving Americas Security Act of 2007. Goodyear has expanded the focus of the DRIIs 10 Professional Practices into what it calls Business Continuity Excellence Maximizing Goodyears Ability to Service Our Customers and Optimize Operations While Operating under Adverse Conditions. Each of the DRIIs 10 Professional Practices was subdivided into 5 maturity levels. Each strategic business unit conducted a self-assessment and is currently working toward higher levels of excellence and continuous improvement. As new BC and risk management concepts emerge, Goodyear conducts a gap analysis to determine whether they are addressed in its existing BC approach and where improvements and changes are justified. Goodyear expanded the September 2007 National Preparedness Month to Goodyears Global Preparedness Month. All regions were asked to ramp up their efforts by joining in an aggressive communications campaign of incident preparedness which is structured to support Goodyears associates, facilities, and operations. Goodyear was ahead of the game in selecting NFPA 1600 as their roadmap and their choice was justified by its selection as one of the three PS-PREP standards. And what about the future? To directly quote Michael W. Janko, Manager of Global Business Continuity at Goodyear: Goodyear will continue to participate with external partners to continually improve our business continuity process. We will focus on Business Continuity Excellence to coordinate global, regional, and facility process improvements. There is a continued focus on preparation, preparation, and preparation (our process, key team members and the entire organization). At Goodyear, we believe voluntary preparedness standards may be voluntary, but for those organizations using and supporting them, they are seen as a valuable part of doing business.... supporting associates.... customers and partners, and part of their overall strategy for operating under adverse conditions. Since then, Janko has further extended the BC program into Goodyears supply chain,4 working on a five-step collaborative process to make its supply chain more resilient. These steps are:

1. Benchmark other global companies that have extremely complex supply chains and aim for uniformity of BC process and terminology.

2. Develop a strategy that is sustainable and understood throughout your organization, using Goodyears internal BC processes based on the DRIIs 10 Professional Practices, NFPA 1600, and Goodyears Business Continuity Excellence program. Goodyear has a BC steering committee that includes VPs of supply chain and procurement, which meets quarterly and identifies any gaps.

3. Determine who is most critical to you, where the greatest risks to your supply chain lie, and how they are tied to your critical vendors. Rank critical suppliers based on the risks they face due to location, exposures, and other business relationship-related factors. For Goodyear, this resulted in a list of about two dozen raw materials suppliers it needed to work with to ensure each had business continuity practices in place.

4. Review and share your business continuity strategies with your critical vendors and attempt to hold them to the same standards. You can share what works well for you without proprietary exchange of information. Critical vendors were invited to workshops to review their BC planning against a checklist. Goodyear works with them on any gaps or challenges they can jointly address and reviews progress to help make decisions on future supply chain and sourcing strategies. 5. Continue to monitor and improve the vendor resiliency process. Goodyear plans to extend this process through its first-tier critical vendors to second-tier suppliers and partners. Ultimately Goodyear wants to audit these suppliers BC plans and processes and eventually incorporate BC requirements into legal agreements and contracts to incentivize its critical partners to have a robust business continuity process.