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Business Continuity

Main Activities and Results （Fiscal 2013）

Activities in Japan

ICT-based Information Sharing for Enabling Business Continuity

It can be difficult to communicate and share information in a disaster, because of the interruption of telecommunications.

NEC improves the communication way in a disaster by using an emergency information sharing system.
This system enables each company, division, and employee to see and download necessary information because the servers of the system are two different locations that is unlikely to suffer from same disaster.
Currently, 135,000 people at 57 companies use this system.
In the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, not only 5,600 employees in affected areas but BCP team members in Tokyo used this system.
Over 20 days after the earthquake, the system was accessed 510,000 times, playing a major role in sharing information.

NEC’s Information Sharing System for Disasters and Pandemics (Overview)

Keeping improvement

NEC has the HQ, the plants, and more than 350 business divisions that should recover and continue their businesses in a disaster. We don’t think developing a BCP is the end goal. We considers it important to keep improving our BCPs to enhance effectiveness and recover our business more quickly through BCM activities such as internal audit.
Even if we establish organizations, BCPs and information sharing system, business continuity does not work well if employees fail to act in a disasters. Therefore, we carry out exercises and training for employees to promote proactive actions in a disaster.

1. Internal audit

NEC conducts internal audits of all BCPs to confirm　the proper implementation of business continuity management (BCM).
We carry out the training of internal audit for approximately 200 internal auditors assigned by Business Unit and NEC group companies. The aim of this training is to audit all BCPs in the same way.
The internal auditors use common guidelines and check sheets. Through these audits, they point out improvements of BCPs to restore and continue businesses in a shorter time.

2. Exercises and training

Our basic approaches for business continuity and disaster recovery are as follows.

  1. Conduct exercises involving top management to restore our business quickly in a wide area disaster.
  2. Carry out exercises to encourage employees to act proactively in a disasters.
  3. Provide e-learning simulation of items that is difficult to carry out at each workplace.

We conduct various exercises such as confirmation of safety at nights and on holidays, disaster prevention meetings in workplaces, disaster imagination games for BCP teams, e-learning for disaster prevention, and notification for all Group companies. Through these exercises, we identify gaps between BCPs and actual disaster so that we can act more effectively and practically.
More than 138,000 people from 54 Group companies participated in exercisess for the NEC group common disaster scenario. The drillsexercises covered initial responses, actions in cooperation and notification to top management.

Activities Outside Japan

In various overseas regions, there have been frequently occurred natural disasters, serious accidents , and pandemic.
Meanwhile, the NEC Group’s supply chains have become increasingly complex and technically advanced as the Group has promoted the globalization of its business operations. This has led to concerns about the possible impact of global risk factors on the NEC Group’s business operations.

The NEC group addresses all NEC group companies of the notification rules in a disaster and assigns the persons in charge in each company. We have constructed a system to understand and share information on the damage status of overseas subsidiaries under 5 regional headquarters, namely Greater China, APAC (Asia Pacific), EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), North America, and Latin America. At the same time, we have a web system to collect and analyze information during initial-response phases at the Headquarters in Japan. To verify the effectiveness, we conducted the notification exercise for 78 overseas subsidiaries in March 2013.

We have prepared BCPs to cover country and regional risks for main overseas subsidiaries, such as production plants. We are prepared to quickly resume businesses by minimizing their damage in a disaster.

For example, floods affected NEC subsidiaries in Thailand in 2012. These businesses included NEC TOKIN Electronics (Thailand) Co., Ltd., and NEC Infrontia Thai Limited at the Navanakorn Industrial  Estate in northern Bangkok. Since all subsidiaries had BCPs, they were able to activate their BCP, and quickly gather information at alternative offices.We were able to discuss measures properly and promptly because they reported daily situation to the HQ in Japan, NEC and subsidiaries will re-examine disaster scenarios and measures to reduce damage with the view to raising the effectiveness ofBCPs through this experience.