Essay About Contingency Plans And Strategic Plans

Wal-MartEssay Preview: Wal-MartReport this essayAmong the important actions carried out by management, planning is the first function needed to lay out the foundation and goals a company will pursue. From a business standpoint, goals are set in association with what stands as the organizations overall mission. Tycos mission statement notes, “We will increase the value of our company and our global portfolio of diversified brands by exceeding customers expectations and achieving market leadership and operating excellence in every segment of our company.” (Tyco.com, 2004, 1). The most excellent way of achieving such goals, calls for management to define the greater of strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency plans that would best serve the organization while keeping mind of the influencing legal, ethical, and social responsibilities. As those important factors, should weigh heavily upon the management overseeing all four of Tyco International divisions.

Predominately handled by upper management, strategic plans involve the making of decisions regarding the organizations long-term goals. Referred to as strategic goals, they include establishing measures to observe company growth in profit, return on investments, market shares, productivity, quantity with quality, and customer satisfaction. Overall, these goals can range a period of up to three or more years to reach. In some cases, the pressures of survival could press an organization to achieve strategic goals in as little as a year and if fortunate enough, meet the goals with success. A good example of which Tyco International experienced during 2004, following a very rough year as the company strived to rise from the 2002 scandal involving its former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dennis Kozlowski and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Mark Swartz. In a letter written for Tycos 2003 Annual Report, the newest CEO Ed Breen wrote, “With our attention now squarely on 2004, the immediate challenge for out team is to continue to improve Our strategic plan, which we began, implementing in 2003, is to grow Tyco organically by increasing business volume, gaining market share and improving operating efficiency.” (Breen, 2004, pg 8). In business, organic growth is a concept where a company seeks to grow by increasing the turnover of its existing business, in contrast to those companies that seek growth by acquiring other companies. Considering the companys past scandal, was this strategic plan the best choice to go with? As CEO Ed Breen put it in Tycos 2004 Annual Report, “Thanks to our customers and our dedicated employees, we had a very good year in 2004. Our success was based on a simple strategy: to make operational excellence a core competency, to build a platform for sustainable organic growth, to invest in our people, and to hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards To that end, I am extremely pleased to report that our sustained progress throughout the year resulted in Tyco meeting or exceeding all of our financial goals.” (Breen, 2205, pg 15). Goes to show just how a good strategic plan could bring a company about.

Along with strategic plans, upper management also takes on the task of creating tactical plans. Designed to interpret the strategic plans and goals with a bit more detail, tactical plans consist of specific goals and plans established for upper to mid level management to carry out in their designated departments and or divisions. Typically, these plans may range a period of months to a year or two. The objective being, that as departments meet or exceed their goals, it will help the overall company to close in on completing its goals. Such was the case with Kendall, a business unit of Tyco Healthcare that is a division of Tyco International, following the organizations strategic plan announcement to further company organic growth. “As part of Tyco Healthcares push to grow internally or organically, Kendall is making what it calls “the next generation of hypodermic needles” with the Monoject Magellan Safety Needle.” (Tyco Worldwide, 2004, 1). The products success, lead to Kendall manufacturing 210 million units to meet client demands in a single fiscal year. Kendalls success, aided Tyco Healthcare to meet the goals placed before them, which in turn aided Tyco International.

While tactical plans and goals help to establish the direction a department or division will proceed to, it is the operational plans that specify the procedures and processes that frontline managers and their employees will follow to meet the give goals. Carried out on a daily bases, these plans can involve tasks such as production runs, quality assurance testing, and progress reporting. In the past such procedures and processes where drawn up by management and the workforce simply followed them accordingly. For most companies today, the creation of an organizations procedures and processes comes from a joint effort between management, employees, vendors, and even customers. Though referred to as lower level plans, operational plans can be just as important as strategic or tactical. This is ever so evident at M/A-COM, a business unit of Tyco Electronics that is another division of Tyco International. They manufacture and supply high-grade communication equipment and caballing to both Boeing and the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). “The products are specially designed and manufactured at M/A-COMs facility in Lowell, Massachusetts (USA) where they undergo extensive qualification programs to satisfy Boeing and NASA requirements. Further, they are subject to rigid manufacturing controls and in-process inspections, in addition to extensive acceptance test procedures.” (Tyco Out of This World, 2004, 3). For when it comes to equipment and services upon which peoples lives are dependent on, Tyco sees to it that everything either meets or beats the standard.

Another type of planning and one that many companies today take into greater consideration are contingency plans. These types of plans consist of alternative courses of action an organization can take during the progress of a project when and if obstacles arise. Such plans can also exist in the form of backup or secondary systems designed to take over when a primary system fails. Tyco and its divisions believe in making an effort to have the best contingency plans possible. In fact, they help develop backup plans and systems for clients as was done by M/A-COM when they assisted with creating an emergency communications backup plan for the city of Slidell, Louisiana. A plan that saw action in 2005 when hurricane Katrina struck, leaving much devastation in its path. “The City of Slidells 800 MHz system, manufactured by a different vendor, was knocked offline by the storm. In response, officials in Slidell turned to their backup preparation plan,

&#8221. “Our backup plans can help us to make the most of what an emergency has to offer, but they also contribute to the overall effort of preparing the emergency to a ready and healthy level while maintaining a balance and focus that ensures that all involved are prepared to be prepared to face the situation,” says a Slidell spokeswoman.&#8222. In addition to keeping business as usual, officials worked to minimize overhead.&#8223. A plan for the city of Slidells 800 MHz system, created by L. L. James, was taken offline by Hurricane Katrina in April 2005 in Louisiana.&#8224. In the aftermath of the storm, the City of Slidells and other organizations quickly and efficiently worked to reduce and eliminate many of the hazards that could have been avoided by the storm.&#8225. These strategies are based on what has been shown in the years that have passed since the hurricane, such as the work of the Department of Environmental Protection, the Weather Channel, and the Louisiana State Water Bureau, both of which made the difference from the outset with a combined action plan for the local authorities and emergency managers.&#8226. The City of Slidells 400 MHz system made its first successful emergency operations when Rita, a low pressure tropical cyclone, struck town and caused damage to large parts of the town. Although the system went down immediately, authorities in Slidell managed to protect thousands from the storm before it crashed into the coast of the Mississippi.&#8227. The City of Slidells 870 MHz system did its best to conserve power and avoid flooding in areas of the town that were impacted by the storm.&#8228. It has been said that in many places around the country, city life has been preserved in the event of a tornado, despite the fact that many residents in many of these places are still displaced by it, and the amount and frequency of the flooding is not always as large as that on American street corners.&#8229. This is because the hurricane that devastated Katrina in 2005 had a significantly higher percentage of residents with severe water damage than it had from water damage, and people often have to stay longer for the full effect to be felt instead of just one minute.&#8230. There have been recent surveys of people on the coasts who say that they have been living in flooded areas in the past year because they feel their communities can get better.&#8231. In 2010, Louisiana was among states that made some efforts to mitigate hurricanes in order to prepare for Katrina.&#8232. In response to the 2005 Louisiana hurricane, Slidell and other localities came together around the nation. When a number was put together that is a different way and the community acted with resources than the one that had been taken from that disaster, a storm surge took over the region.&#8233. Since then that has been an incredibly impactful fact for residents of the various towns in Louisiana and other parts of the country because more people are relying on the community for relief.&#8234. In fact, that was the cause that caused an unseasonable hurricane for a variety of towns in Southern Louisiana last fall. This is also how Hurricane Rita devastated the community after it flooded.&#8235. The state of Louisiana has not made any plans in its planning and action history to mitigate water shortages, but with the addition of their 300 MHz and the state of Louisiana, the problem will probably start to get worse with the added threat of flooding and power outages.&#8236. By the time the storm came to the city of Slidell on March 27, 2010, an emergency preparedness plan had been developed. It included several contingency plans. Those plans included evacuation plans for most of New Orleans, roads,