Business Continuity Management

To counter risks which could significantly impact Head Office functions and are beyond a company's capacity to prevent, such as natural disasters and pandemic influenza, Sumitomo Forestry has established the BCM Subcommittee^*. The subcommittee sits under the Risk Management Committee, is chaired by the general manager of the General Administration Department and is comprised of the persons responsible for risk management including Group company, which enhances business continuity management system (BCM) and promotes initiatives based upon business continuity plans (BCP). Since Sumitomo Forestry Group companies are an integral link in the supply chain of one another's business, each Group company is committed to constantly improving the resilience of the whole Group, and tackling Group-wide issues with the intention of enhancing business continuity.

In fiscal 2018, Sumitomo Forestry held four BCP Subcommittee meetings. Critical initial responses in the event of a powerful earthquake, such as Tokyo Inland Earthquake was reviewed; in the meantime various training programs were planned and implemented.

* The BCP Subcommittee was renamed to BCM Subcommittee in April 2019 in order to promote its BCM system in the entire Group, and improving business continuity with responding to variety of crises, expanding alternative locations, and strengthening disaster recovery headquarters functions.

Sumitomo Forestry Group distributes Portable Guides for Risk Responses to all Group employees in Japan, promoting the basic response procedure to take in the event of a disaster. A safety confirmation system has also been introduced, allowing the safety of employees to be checked quickly in the event of a natural disaster. Safety confirmation drills are conducted at domestic Group companies every year, and in fiscal 2018, a sum of 14,763 employees have participated in them.

Furthermore, we have been operating a crisis management portal site since October 2016 as an information communication tool indispensable to business continuity from the moment disaster strikes through the recovery. This portal site allows employees Group-wide to confirm notices from the company and disaster information with only access to the Internet even when verbal communication networks and transportation infrastructure are down. Members and other staff entrusted with the responsibilities at each division, base and affiliate company can also share information through SNS functionality on the portal site to regularly confirm safety and conduct information communication training.

In order to overcome the chaos immediately after a large-scale earthquake strikes and to transition quickly to action for business continuity, it is vitally important that the people in charge can make an initial response and can make decisions according to the situation at hand. For this reason, since fiscal 2011, the Sumitomo Forestry Group has continued to conduct BCP Large Scale Earthquake Countermeasures Simulation Training, targeted at the persons in charge at each Group company. The aim of this training is to get participants to experience a simulated “crisis” in an earthquake and to acquire an awareness of the issues, by getting them to make spur of the moment decisions again and again based on rigorous hypothetical scenarios. During the training, since Group companies from neighboring areas are assembled together in one place, another aim of the exercise is to share an awareness of risks and to strengthen cooperation among them in an emergency. To date, a cumulative total of more than 550 people have participated in this training.

Systems have also been developed so that, in situations where employees find getting to work difficult, payment of salaries, payments to business partners and other important business operations can still be carried out from a site designated in advance, an employee dormitory, their home or other remote locations while maintaining a high level of security. Simulation drills to check back-up office operations are also conducted every year.

In fiscal 2018, we conducted first-response and rescue training to learn techniques using crowbars on-site (simulating the aftermath of serious earthquakes when no immediate emergency dispatch can be anticipated), simple triage and rapid treatment (JumpSTART Triage) for injured victims, and transport techniques for injured victims.