Can we make up an incident for the crisis management mock exercise?

Is it mandatory to have a real incident or just a  made up one is okay? can you pleas help me with examples? I have already presented the pandemic last year but cannot think of anything for this year.

In my experience with SQF a made up one is absolutely ok as long as it's something that could potentially happen to your facility in reality (i.e. don't pick an ice storm if you're located in Death Valley, CA)  With the prevalence of cyber attacks in the news, we used a cyber attack for our crisis management exercise this year.  You can use common weather occurrences/power outages from your area, water quality issues, breaks in crucial supply chains, etc.  Good luck!

Just making an assumption on the crisis that might happened is ok. So you can get yourself prepared when there's a crisis. 

The CoVid pandemic like you mentioned is one of it. You may also add on to other possible contaminable diseases that might happened in the future. 

Other ideas are such as electricity shortage (like what is happening now), internet disruption (if your factory is using the Internet of Things to monitor all machines), fire and etc. 

Years back I consulted with a honey company whose building was the tallest one in town at 100 feet. It also just happened to be in the flight path of a local airport.

When I went in my first day I was reviewing their plan and seeing the entry about the potential for a plane hitting the building... I said well gee I guess thats not going to happen... but we went ahead and modified the plan...

6 months later a small cessna plane had lost its instuments while on approach to the runway and the pilot dipped too low... slamming in fog into the side of the building.

The plane and 3 people aboard were destroyed and the building sustainef amost a million in damamge - fortunite that it happened on a sunday when the business was closed.

They used the plan we modified to handle the aftermath.

Look for some situations that could possibily happen even if remote and go with that.

I was meant to see this.  I am currently working on our mock crisis and we are right next door to a small airport.  We aren't a tall building, but we are large. This scenario completely slipped by all of us.  There is a sky diving operation out of that airport as well.  Maybe I need to consider someone dropping in on us unexpectedly?  :yikes:

yes, in the same way you would conduct a Mock recall exercise. just pick something realistic for your business like a power failure that would affect cookers/chillers/IT ect

Consider potential threats from the neighboring facilities, if any. For example, if your facility is located along train tracks, what could happen if there was a derailment? Or if you're within # miles of a nuclear powerplant, what would happen if there was an incident? Try taking a look at various local crises that have happened in your area within the last decade and get inspiration from those as well.

Yes, it is a good part of practice to create a "what if scenario" and plan in the event. Here are a few ideas:

power outage: the site cannot manufacture and your orders won't ship. you can test your lines of communication: between management and employees by text and cell phone. then informing clients. do you have the most up-to-date contact info? if not, use this as an opportunity to update your records.  do clients have management's cell phone numbers? does the office have landline or cable phone service?

network failure: how to you generate bills of lading and shipping labels if your system fails? where is the back-up system? is there equipment at another site?

We have used tornadoes, snow caving a roof in, electrical box exploding (this actually happened but outside), plane crash involving ownership, and pandemics.