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facturing plant, and how Baxter has prepared for the future.
The immediate aftermath Because of the severity of Hurricane Helene, Baxter implemented its hurricane preparedness plan prior to the storm reaching Marion, including evacuating employees to support their safety, relocating finished product and loaded trailers to higher ground, and installing a floodgate for the onsite automated warehouse to mitigate the deluge of water about to hit the plant.
“ There were a lot of things we did as the storm was approaching that really helped our recovery coming out of it,” said David Stone, senior director of business resiliency for Baxter.“ And I don’ t want to gloss over the fact that it’ s not just the production
Hurricane Helene’ s devastation was record-setting. Here are some facts about the storm’ s impact on the region, which are still being felt today.
• Reached peak winds of 140mph
• Traveled nearly 500 miles
• One of the strongest hurricanes to strike Florida since records began in 1900
• Western North Carolina received up to 31.3 inches of rain over three days
• Caused over 2,000 landslides
• Four million people lost electricity
• Estimated damages exceeded $ 78.7 billion
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lines that are vital in this facility, but also our warehouses.”
Baxter shut down and discharged residual electricity from machinery and robotics across the site, a key move that allowed them to preserve and support their eventual restart of equipment.
As the storm approached The Baxter leadership team started to meet the evening of the storm, quickly implementing a governance structure to manage the company’ s comprehensive response and recovery efforts. Once the hurricane passed, that team activated to tackle the storm’ s aftermath on a number of fronts and set clear priorities: locate, ensure the safety of and support the plant’ s 2,500 + employees( an endeavor lasting weeks in some cases due to limited connectivity and access for residents in the affected region), assess the state of the facility and determine how best to help maintain supply for customers and patients.
“ From a facility and supply perspective, we needed to know what happened, what we lost, and try to estimate how long it was going to take to get back up,” said Stone.“ Based on information we downloaded before the storm hit, we were able to do an assessment of everything we make in the plant: Where physically is the inventory of those products? How much do we have on hand? Not knowing when we might recover production, what’ s our plan B, plan C and plan D?”
Baxter put a temporary, 48-hour ship hold on product. They also immediately engaged with government agencies, knowing that beyond the state of the plant, they would have to
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access washed out roads, a stressed power grid and other critical infrastructure to even move any existing product out of the facility.
Partners through the storm As news spread about Helene and its impact to the community, the country’ s medical facilities that rely on IV fluids from North Cove knew there could be a shortage. Medline, one of the company’ s distribution partners, began working closely with Baxter to ensure the product went out to customers in a fair and reasonable manner.
“ We found out about the flooding on a Sunday, and we were able to lock down all of our inventory by Monday, so people weren’ t able to take a run on it,” said Erin Meredith, vendor relations manager at Medline.“ So that was probably the most important thing we did right away, to be able to give Baxter time to react, to see how much inventory they had in their branches once things cleared up. But that, in itself, probably took two weeks.”
Locking down the inventory so customers can’ t buy it all up,
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leaving others wanting for IV fluids, was key in those early hours.
“ We were able to let it trickle out, so customers were still able to get some kind of supply, but they weren’ t able to go buy our entire branch worth of inventory,” said Ryan Haley, Medline director of vendor relations.“ Baxter moved mountains for what they were able to do with their own facility. From our vantage point, Medline moved mountains and absorbed cost to get product from them as quickly as possible and push it around our network.”
Haley noted that when a manufacturer suffers a disruption like this, you don’ t see the level of transparency and quick action that Medline experienced with Baxter. Baxter and Medline teams talked several times a day to decide together how to best get the IV fluids out to their shared customers, who were the thousands of awaiting hospitals.
“ Medline’ s network helped us support patient need throughout the country, particularly in the first several weeks following the storm,” said Mary Henson, general manager of Baxter’ s infusion
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