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Chapter Failure prevention and recovery

19

Eurotunnel response team during one of their regular patrols in the tunnel
Source: Eurotunnel

Introduction
One obvious way of improving operations performance is by preventing failure. Failure is rarely unimportant, but in some operations it is vital that processes do not fail. Failure in aircraft in flight, for example, or electricity supplies to hospitals, or car seat belts, or the emergency services can be literally fatal. For these operations dependability is not just desirable, it is essential. Even in less critical situations, having dependable processes can give a competitive advantage. But no process is perfect and failures will occur. So it is important that we learn from all failures and have plans in place which help them recover and minimize their effects. Figure 19.1 shows how this chapter fits into the operation’s improvement activities.

Operations strategy

Failure prevention and recovery

Operations process improvement makes processes better

Design

Operations management

Improvement

Total quality management organizes process improvement

Planning and control

Failure prevention and recovery stops processes becoming worse

Topic covered in this chapter

Figure 19.1 This chapter covers failure prevention and recovery

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Part Four Improvement

Key questions
I I I I I

???

Why do operations fail? How is failure measured? How can failure and potential failure be detected and analyzed? How can operations improve their reliability? How should operations recover when failure does occur?

Operations (not) in practice
Barings Bank and Nick Leeson
On 3 March 1995 Nick Leeson, the Singapore-based ‘rogue trader’, was arrested immediately after his flight from the Far East touched down in Frankfurt. Since 27 February, the world’s financial community had