USE OF SIMULATION IN A FACTORY FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING

Companies can suffer significant losses as a result of unanticipated business disruptions caused by natural disasters or outbreaks of disease. In order to restore the organization's critical functions and minimize the impacts of a disruption, it is important to establish business continuity planning and recovery planning. First the risks in the external environment surrounding the companies and business continuity planning were described. Then, how the computer-based simulation technique could be utilized to establish the business continuity planning was examined under a pandemic environment. In this study, an approach of examining the operation rates and the plant-utilization rates was proposed for a factory, by applying simulation. The proposed approach was applied to a real manufacturer especially under a pandemic flu environment in order to confirm its effectiveness. (Received in July 2010, accepted in November 2010. This paper was with the authors 1 month for 1 revision.)