[Rhodes22-list] Bragging Rights

[Slim]

Brad,

Wow!  That's a truly forward-thinking company.  They get bragging rights for
sure.  Does FedEx hire piano players?

Slim

On 9/19/05 5:19 PM, "brad haslett" <flybrad at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 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.
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> 
> 
> 
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