[Rhodes22-list] Bragging Rights

[brad haslett]

They couldn't have done without my help from China.

Brad

--------------

 

(Photo: David Spielman)  
 
AFTER KATRINA: CRISIS MANAGEMENT
For FedEx, It Was Time to Deliver
Years of coping with calamity have taught the huge
shipper to improvise. That came in handy when the big
storm hit.

FORTUNE

Monday, September 19, 2005 
By Ellen Florian Kratz 


Watching TV in Memphis, Mike Mitchell didn't get it.
Day after day, the FedEx Express senior technical
advisor heard reporters describe how desperately New
Orleans rescuers needed communications. Nobody seemed
able to fix the problem. Finally, on the Thursday
after Katrina hit, Mitchell spied a way to help: an
aerial shot of a 54-story building near the convention
center showed the intact base for a FedEx radio
antenna, part of a system he had visited in 2004 on a
maintenance check. That led him to hope that part of
the installation had survived. We have spare parts
here in Memphis, he thought. If we could just get a
generator to the roof and radios to the rescuers,
they'd have a way of talking to one another. Mitchell
shot an e-mail to his boss the next day. It made its
way up the ranks. FedEx called FEMA. FEMA called the
82nd Air-borne Division. They all liked the idea. 

Five days later Mitchell arrived in New Orleans with
125 walkie-talkies, a few changes of clothes, and a
sleeping bag. He didn't know how he'd get to the top
of the building or exactly what he'd find there. But
he was determined to make the radios work. "I didn't
want to let all those people down," he says. There
turned out to be just enough fuel in the building's
emergency generator for a couple of elevator rides to
the top. An Army helicopter dropped in a half-ton of
gear, including a nine-foot antenna to replace the one
Katrina had sheared off. With help from eight
soldiers, Mitchell fixed it. "Radio check," he called
into a walkie-talkie after they had finished. "Lima
Charlie," a soldier shot back. (Translation: loud and
clear.) Thanks to FedEx, members of the 82nd and other
rescuers finally had a reliable radio net. 

Impressive as Mitchell's radio rescue was, such dramas
are almost routine for FedEx. "That's the nature of
our business," says Dave Bronczek, who heads FedEx's
Express division. "We're used to dealing with crisis."
At any given moment, somewhere in the world there is a
social upheaval, a dangerous storm, a wildcat strike.
FedEx, which earns its money by being dependable,
can't afford a wait-and-see attitude; it moves in
advance. 

Emergency central at the company is a big, dimly lit
room on the fourth floor of its new Global Operations
Control in Memphis. John Dunavant is the GOC's chief;
it's his job to make sure the hundreds of planes and
thousands of trucks arrive when they're supposed to,
and to have a sure-fire backup plan when they don't. A
large screen at the front of the room shows the
position, origin, and destination of every aircraft
FedEx currently has in the sky. It is 15:54 Greenwich
Mean Time on a recent Friday, and exactly 80 planes
are in the air. Ten seconds later there are 79. One
has just landed. 

Every day of the year FedEx must cope with some sort
of local disruption. In 2004 the company had to
activate contingency plans on 37 tropical storms. This
year that number stands at 30 and counting. Add to
that such events as an air-traffic-controller strike
in France this March and a blackout in Los Angeles in
September, and it's no wonder that FedEx gets so much
practice in flexibility. What's more, FedEx conducts
diaster drills several times a year-for everything
from big earthquakes to bioterrorism to a monster
typhoon hitting the company's hub in the Philippines.
Eight disaster kits, each containing two tons of such
supplies as fuel and communications gear, stand ready
in Memphis in case a facility is in need of repair.
Each night, five empty FedEx flights roam the skies,
standing by to replace a broken-down plane or assist
with an unexpected surge in volume. 

All this, of course, makes FedEx a national resource
during a crisis like Katrina. Before the storm hit,
FedEx positioned 30,000 bags of ice, 30,000 gallons of
water, and 85 home generators outside Baton Rouge and
Tallahassee so that it could move in quickly after the
storm to relieve employees. Also dispatched in advance
were four of those 4,000-pound facility repair kits. 

FedEx also made preparations on behalf of the Red
Cross, which keeps shipping containers filled with
bandages, blankets, batteries, and such at FedEx hubs
to be dispatched around the globe at a moment's
notice. Before Katrina, FedEx staged 60 tons of Red
Cross provisions (it has since delivered another 440
tons of relief supplies, mostly at no charge). FedEx
Kinko's, the company's newest division, staged Canon
and Xerox copiers, 700 cases of paper, and 300 bottles
of toner in Covington and Baton Rouge so that FEMA and
the Red Cross would have the office supplies they
would need. "Kinko's had always been reactive," says
division chief Gary Kusin. "[At FedEx] I got to see
how the big boys do it." 

Though FedEx was ready for Katrina's high winds, the
subsequent flooding and chaos took the company by
surprise. "In no way did we envision what was going to
happen. We're not Nostradamus," says Dunavant. The
local authorities blocked access to entire zip codes;
FedEx returned some 10,000 packages to their senders,
and to head off new shipments to the closed zones, CIO
Rob Carter's IT team rushed to reprogram more than
100,000 devices. Since the New Orleans airport was
also closed, FedEx shifted its area hub to Lafayette,
La., 135 miles away-a process that normally takes six
months. Before Katrina, Lafayette would see a single
FedEx turboprop carrying packages each day. Now three
727 jets unload there. RVs lined up in a gravel
parking lot house employees who have come in from
other areas to keep operations humming. 

Like Andrew before her, Katrina has taught FedEx a
thing or two about disaster preparation. Lesson No. 1:
Arrange for temporary housing in advance for employees
who might get displaced. Lesson No. 2: Don't count on
cellphones. The local networks were down for days
after the storm; the company is increasing the number
of satellite phones it deploys. 

In the center of the operations room is a 30-foot-long
table with 12 microphones clustered toward the middle.
That's where Dunavant sits. Since Aug. 24, five days
before Katrina struck the Gulf, he has conducted a
twice-daily conference call for more than 100 people.
The Sept. 9 call is the last of the Katrina crisis.
"Good morning," he says. "It's 10 o'clock in Memphis.
Let's get started." For the next 45 minutes he speaks
calmly and swiftly. There are three major items on the
agenda: making sure roads are passable for delivery
trucks to revive service in Covington, La.; finding
out where computer connectivity stands in Lafayette
and Biloxi; and getting an update on the status of
employees in the area and the relief supplies they
still need. Dunavant makes sure everyone is clear on
what he expects of them. Then he wraps up. "Thanks for
your hard work," he concludes. "Hopefully, we won't
talk to you for a while." But this same morning a
FedEx meteorologist has already come by to brief the
staff on a storm named Ophelia. 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



		
__________________________________ 
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 
http://mail.yahoo.com