Industrial Area Business Continuity Management Exercise: An Experimental Validation for Flood in Thailand

In the event of a crisis, companies in industrial complexes and surrounding regional organizations that share production bases and operating resources need to manage business continuity through coordinated mutual cooperation in public and private sectors, in addition to their individual business continuity plans (BCPs). This framework of collaboration is called area business continuity management (Area BCM). This note proposes and validates a participatory exercise which contributes to formulate Industrial Area BCM based on a series of studies conducted in the project called Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) targeting industrial complexes in Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Province, Thailand. The proposed exercise for enhancing the effectiveness of individual company BCPs through Industrial Area BCM has the following three functions: 1) provision of reliable and objective information to support rational decision-making by individual companies, 2) identification of factors affecting the decision-making and response of stakeholders that prevent the BCPs of individual companies from planned operations, and 3) development of complementary indicators consists of coordination and collaboration with regional stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of individual BCP.