Name: Anand Kumar Chaudhari

19PGDM-BHU009
Case study: Nissan recovering supply chain operations
the case talks about natural calamities such as earthquake, tsunami etc posing a
great threat to the functioning of a business and affecting its operations on a large
scale. On March 11, 2011 an earthquake struck off the coast of Japan. The impact of
such disaster was devastating. The automotive industry comprising big Companies
such as Toyota, Honda and Nissan were hugely impacted by the disaster. The case
particularly talks about Nissan, damage caused to the Company by the earthquake
and consequently its response to the disaster. Several protective measures were
taken up by the Company post the disaster to gain back the momentum of business
operations and generate considerable flow of income to stabilize situations. These
include sharing information with global regions, allocating supply given capacity
constraints and excess dependents across national boundaries, managing
production processes and making speedy decisions without lengthy analysis which
consumes time. Also several operational changes were announced by the Company
in 2012,post the disaster to make the business more sustainable and less prone to
severe disruptions.
Response of Nissan to the Disaster and its Relative Costs and Benefits
As a response to the disaster, the Recovery Committee (established by Nissan to
coordinate global recovery actions) laid emphasis on few meaningful practices such
as:
 Sharing information
 Allocating Supply
 Managing Production
 Empowering Action
Nissan had well developed an earthquake emergency-response plan beforehand.
This is extremely important for any Company to develop an appropriate recovery
plan keeping in mind various un fore seen natural calamities such as earthquakes,
floods, tsunami etc. Therefore, several other measures which could have been
undertaken by Nissan to respond to the disaster include:
 Maintaining data centre
 Involvement of top management or higher level executives
 Risk assessment
 Organize and document the plan