Disasters such as the recent parliament shooting in Ottawa, Superstorm Sandy, and the Great Japan Sea Earthquake and tsunami are reminders of the roles essential service organizations have in maintaining public health. On a daily basis, organizations are expected to operate under normal conditions, providing goods, services, and community supports. In crisis situations, it is critical that these organizations continue to operate and contribute to adaptive response and recovery in a community. Business continuity planning focuses on ensuring continued functioning of core operations during a disruption. Inherent to the business continuity field is a prevent-and-protect approach to preparedness activities. Asset-mapping exercises have the potential to balance the predominantly risk-based field by focusing on the strengths and capabilities already present within an organization. To understand the value of asset-mapping activities in business continuity plans (BCPs), indicators for organizational resilience are needed. Indicators have the potential to provide essential service organizations with a way to gauge the value of their BCP activities. In addition, this information can help guide decision-makers when developing BCPs. This research is part of a larger project at the University of Ottawa focused on building the empirical evidence base for BCPs and organizational resilience. This thesis, as a sub-study within the larger project, explores assets and indicators for organizational resilience to contribute to the effective evaluation and engagement of organizations in business continuity planning efforts. Emergent themes highlight the importance of assets and their contribution to the adaptive capacity of an organization in the event of a disaster. This study also provides an example list of 28 SMARTT organizational resilience indicators directly derived from organizational assets, providing information that researchers and essential service organizations can use to evaluate business continuity planning activities in relation to organizational resilience.

In today's business Information technology (IT) and Information plays a key role. Due todevelopment and influence of Information Technology, using systems, IT services andnetworks cannot be avoided in the business and they all need to be protected and secured.In order to ensure such a higher sort of security and protection, the Information securitysystem (ISS) have been used. Still the businesses today are enveloped with higher risks andupshots which are also being narrower and keeping changed consistently. At suchcircumstance the solution providing method should be very unique and narrower to each andevery slot of business, for a competitive and higher security. Thus such compact solutionsbeen given by Business Continuity Planning (BCP) method. Business Continuity Plan, a chiefidea engendered from the stream of information security.This research involves with a case study in regard to the Railway sector in making a BusinessContinuity Planning (BCP) on Network security, System Security and Physical Security of it.Thus the way of presentation been more systematically followed up in order to make thereader to understand the results more easily.Following in the Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, the Introduction and background studies which areneeded to be known to draw a BCP plan on Network, System and Physical Securities. Chapter3 Result section, will gives the recommendation that need to be followed for drawing aNetwork, System and Physical Securities in a railway network. / Done in Southern Indian Railways, India.

Bakgrund: Med anledning av att externa risker är oundvikligt för företag krävs det en beredskap för mitigera och mildra dess effekter. Likväl om en risk realiseras leder det till en kris som också måste besvaras av organisationen. Detta innebär att företag måste ha utvecklade styrverktyg för att hantera detta. Ett sätt är med hjälp av risk och krishantering likväl Business Continuity Management BCM.  Syfte: Syftet med studien är att få djupare förståelse för hur IKEA som organisation arbetar med risk och krishantering utifrån faserna före, under och efter krisen samt hur organisationen har agerat och anpassat sig under pandemin specifikt på den svenska marknaden. Studien avser även att analysera om IKEA:s tillvägagångssätt efterliknar BCM-strategier genom att jämföra teori med praktik. Metod: Genom att bruka en kvalitativ forskningsmetod har materialinsamlingen till empirin möjliggjorts via semistrukturerade intervjuer. En abduktiv forskningsansats har nyttjats likväl en fallstudie som forskningsdesign som möjliggjort att få djupare förståelse över IKEA:s risk- och krishantering. Slutsats: Studien visar på att IKEA har en välutvecklad risk- och krishantering inom organisationen utifrån krisens tre faser. Vidare kan det konstateras att IKEA inte har tillämpat BCM enhetligt inom organisationen. Däremot dras slutsatser om att organisationen mer under pandemin har tillämpat strategier som går i linje med BCM. Ytterligare kan slutsatser dras om vilka åtgärder för att anpassa varuhusen mot verksamhetsstörningar, där social distansering och utökad e-handel har varit väsentliga åtgärder. / Background: Due to the fact that external risks are inevitable for companies, a readiness is required to mitigate its effects. Nevertheless, if a risk is realized, it leads to a crisis which must be answered by the organization. This means companies must develop control tools to handle the effect. One way is with the help of risk and crisis management, also, Business Continuity Management. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of how IKEA as an organization works with risk and crisis management based on the phases before, during and after the crisis and how the organization has acted and adapted during the pandemic specifically in the Swedish market. The study also intends to analyze whether IKEA's approach mimics BCM strategies by comparing theory with practice. Method: By using a qualitative research method, the collection of material for the empirical data has been made possible via semi-structured interviews. An abductive research approach has been used as well as a case study as research design which made it possible to gain a deeper understanding of IKEA's risk and crisis management. Conclusion: The study shows that IKEA has a well-developed risk and crisis management within the organization based on the crisis three phases. Furthermore, it can be stated that IKEA has not applied BCM uniformly within the organization. On the other hand, conclusions are drawn the organization has during the pandemic applied strategies which are in line with BCM. Furthermore, conclusions can be drawn about which measures to adapt the department stores to operational disruptions, where social distancing and increased e-commerce have been significant measures.

SpaceX as aerospace manufacturer and space transport service technology company work along to make reusable rockets, their long term plan is to make spaceflight affordable routine. Elon Musk, as CEO, is involved in every step of decision making as he has mentioned in interviews. The rocket's engine has undergone a number of improvements, and to increase its efficiency and power, a number of parts has been reduced. The redesigning process involves several decisions, such as in-house or out-source production. This research provides a practical framework for contractors, suppliers, and manufacturers to build a more reliable, affordable, and low cost supply chain. As a result, the objective of my dissertation is to explore how managers can extend the useful life of their assets and reduce their total cost of ownership. The main research focus for this dissertation is lifecycle affordability (LCA) for capital intensive products when post production costs are significantly higher than production costs. Lifecycle cost is often not considered by firms in a product, service or asset when making acquisition decisions. Firm's acquisition are mainly based on the initial cost of the product. Decision making without considering the entire lifecycle cost of a product impacts the firm's profitability, revenue, pricing strategies, and competitiveness. Evaluating the trade-offs between all the costs involved in the product lifecycle can help firms to have an estimation of costs before making any acquisition decisions. To address these challenges, lifecycle affordability (LCA) considerations can enable firms to focus their decisions on their long-term investment process rather than trying to save on initial cost of purchasing a product. This dissertation presents the following research question: how has lifecycle affordability been represented in supply chain research to date? And what are constructs of lifecycle affordability? To address this research question, the dissertation is comprised of three separate essays. The first essay conducts literature review method to provide a framework for lifecycle affordability that reduces the total lifecycle cost while maintaining the reliability and efficiency of the capital equipment, and identify existing research gaps and future LCA research ideas. The second essay is constructed on a survey-based method and investigations how homeowners' lack of understanding lifecycle cost, and long-term affordability affects their dissatisfaction with the home purchase. A regression model is developed to study the factors that explain Homebuyers' lack of understanding cost, and affordability considerations. The third essay developed an agent-based model (ABM) to study small medium businesses (SMB) when the business organization and the community is hit by a disaster. The objective of the study is to investigate the resiliency and lifecycle affordability management of the community and the small medium businesses.

Enterprises with a global supply network are at risk of lost revenue as a result of disruptive disasters at supplier locations. Various strategies exist for addressing this risk, and a variety of types of research has been done regarding the identification, assessment and response to the risk of disruption in a supply chain network. This thesis establishes a decision model to support Business Continuity Planning at the first-tier supplier level. The decision model incorporates discrete-event simulation of supply chain networks (through Simio software), Monte Carlo simulation, and risk index optimization. After modeling disruption vulnerability in a supply chain network, costs of implementing all combinations of Business Continuity Plans are ranked and then tested in discrete-event simulation for further insight into inventory levels, unmet customer demand, production loss and related costs. A case study demonstrates the implementation of the decision support process and tests a historical set of data from a large manufacturing company. Discrete-event simulation modeling of loss is confirmed to be accurate. The relevance of the model concept is upheld and recommendations for future work are made.