Testing Point
A recent fire incident at the office and warehouse of Printech Middle East, located at Dubai Investment Park, forced them to relocate their entire operations within a week’s time. Pankaj Patel, CEO of Printech Middle East narrated the incident to ME Printer, “The incident happened on 17th of November 2012 and involved our warehouse and demo centre. The fire, which spread from a nearby warehouse, engulfed the office premises and we incurred almost 100 per cent damage.”
Pankaj adds that a well planned task management force and immediate action helped them in overcoming the incident without any major complications. “We are lucky that we have a close knit team which showed up great teamwork and dedication to handle this crisis for the company and its customers. Immediately after the fire, we created a crisis management team and distributed the workload among them. Our main focus was to continue the business with our ongoing customers without any hindrance. We were very particular because most of our customers are either from the process or the service industry and we couldn’t risk their lines to come to a standstill at any cost.”
“Our customers supported us by showing tremendous trust and gave us – material on loan to avoid stock-outs for others, certain customers even made early payments to support our cash flow, burnt PDCs were immediately replaced by many of them. We can only thank them for this kind of belief and support extended to us during this crisis. Suppliers also supported us with emergency deliveries to build up essential stocks.” He added, “As we have a very well planned and managed logistics system, we had a couple of containers coming into the warehouse. So, within two days time we took another warehouse and were able to continue our operations without much hindrance. Even our landlords have extended their support to us by giving us some relief on warehouse rent and immediate replacement of warehouse space. Even while setting up alternate office and warehouse locations, the company was operational and maintained its connectivity with the customers.”
Pankaj, who came forward to share his experience with the industry, says that such incident could happen to anyone and they must be fully prepared to face such calamities. He recounted their key learning’s:
1. Consult a professional to evaluate your insurance policy to be as per your current business requirements with third party cover.
2. Keep a backup of your complete data at a remote location always.
3. Ensure fire fighting training for all employees with regular fire drills.
