Crisis Management - How real does the test need to be?

Hi, I have a bakery. I am looking to test my crisis scenario and I am wondering the best way to do it. My "mock crisis" would be if we had a prolonged power outage. The thing is, I'm not trying to pull the plug on my entire operation to actually test this crisis. If my crisis management team and I have a meeting to just discuss this scenario in detail and we make sure to document our discussion, the tasks we would complete, our plan to get back up and running once the crisis is over, the gaps we have in our plan, etc.... Is that enough?

Mock scenario is all you need!  Please don't actually pull the plug lol

The purpose is to ensure

A) your company is aware of the impacts of a crisis in hopes it prevents bad actors from making ill advised decisions

B) work through known potential issues so that you can get up and running safely, as quick as possible without sacrificing your brand/goods/safety

This is an opportunity to see how much things like, temporary off site warehousing, generator rentals etc actually cost, and can you get what you need quick enough

run it just like you would a forensic mock recall. --- 

MOCK being the key action here.

If you really want to go that extra mile, go out and interview some employees that would have responsibilities relating to said crisis: "Hey Joe, I'm running a crisis scenario and this year we got prolonged power outage. If we were at X hours of a power outage, what would you be doing?" "Hey Sue, I'm running a crisis scenario this year on how we'd react if we lost power. Let's say we just lost power, what would you do?"

This will help you get some real world feedback on if any additional training might be needed for key positions.

Writer's block gets me every year.  Trying to think up a new scenario is a lot of work. We are a very simple low risk operation. Dry goods stored at ambient temperatures.  I've used a tornado, (roof damage, we have a large generator for power) Fire (sprinkler-soaked product) forklift crash with bodily fluids released in a large area, mouse infestation, etc.   Even though Covid has receded I'm thinking of using that this year.(staff reduction), but it almost feels like cheating.  Anyone got any other "scenario" ideas??

Hurricane and or flood, unauthorized entry, infestation scenario (eww), heat wave (especially if there are refrigerated products involved, but can affect many other food manufacturers), extended power outage, extended internet or network outage.

Get one of the AI programs to write one for you.  Seriously!  But also as any mock / crisis I've run, I make sure that information comes in gradually and I normally test it without me as most senior Technical person so we can try it with the wider team who might have to run it when I have holiday.

So a power outage is good.  You could have the original power out.  Perhaps share details of any temperature critical equipment at various points.  Maybe the power comes back on after a bit and some of your ingredients got to, say, 10oC etc etc.

I've also toyed with starting an incident with indicators in my verification activities (or at least that being part of the crisis) so for example, lots of metal "false activations" then you get a metal complaint or a series of missed or vastly time reduced cleans is the first sign, a consumer being hospitalised for Listeriosis is the second.  I thought that could be really interesting for some senior teams to consider the first notification of an issue might be something that feels serious but not all that critical and they may do nothing then regret that.

Don't just limit yourself to your facility.  We were told "political unrest" was a buzzword, so we did if there was a protest at a foreign owned company next door that blocked the main road to our building.  Included contacting a security company and how to get employees and trucks safely to our building. 

Take a look at businesses around you and is there anything that could go wrong there that could potentially affect you?  We have a garden supply company near one of our sites that has huge piles of beauty bark they bring in every year that could potentially cause a huge fire.  We have also had tire fires nearby and a warehouse fire (anhydrous ammonia refrigerant) that we were right outside the evacuation zone, but inside the potential secondary evacuation zone.