This is achieved by means of:
- A management structure within which business continuity management responsibilities are clearly defined.
- Clear communications channels with all stakeholders and participants in our business continuity arrangements.
- Procedures for understanding risk, and taking action to ensure all residual risks, after mitigation, are classified as medium or lower, according to an Enterprise Risk Management matrix.
- Establishing contingency plans and managing disruptions to ensure critical products and services are maintained.
- Flexible working policies to minimise critical operational dependencies wherever possible.
- An appropriate organisation to plan, implement, monitor, measure and review the effectiveness of these arrangements.
“It is the duty of every individual to work in such a manner as to ensure our operations are protected. I am committed to delivering continuity of operation at all times and regard this policy as an integral part of our business activities.”
Achievements
The first objective of a Business Continuity Management system is to avoid the occurrence of events which impact our ability to provide continuity of service to our customers. In Siemens Healthineers we have been very successful in this respect and have had very few occasions on which we have had to call our emergency response processes into action.
In recent years we have had to trigger our emergency procedures on three occasions to deal with the closure of UK airspace which disrupted our normal parts supply chain, to maintain service to customers whilst our Head Office was closed for a period due to snow and of during the COVID-19 pandemic. In all cases, our emergency procedures worked effectively and we maintained critical service to all our customers with minimum disruption to our business operation.