Practical know-how of the Global Project

Hitoshi Goto

Ukihiko Takagi

In Part14, we discussed the issue of translating documents into foreign languages in overseas projects. This time, we will look at “Infrastructure risk” that we should be aware of in overseas projects.

In some cases the schedule has been affected by blackouts due to heavy rain.

Risk management has been introduced in domestic projects, but there may be few projects that list frequent blackouts and network interruptions as risk items.

This is quite important overseas.

In Brazil, infrastructure risk that could not be considered in Japan actually occurred.

Blackouts and netwok interruptions due to heavy rain often occurred not only in the factory but also in the whole area.　They occurred as many time as once a week.
As a result, we could not connect to the test system environment, and the schedule was affected.

In Japan, server rooms and data centers are mostly protected against power outages, but you should not expect the same in some countries or regions.

For server down, it is possible to take risk-measures that you prepare a cloud environment, but if network failure occurs, there is no way out.

Therefore, depending on the country or region, you need to take measures so as not to include the rainy season in the schedule. At such times, material procurement may also stop.

Do not think of infrastructure as same as in Japan, and do thorough prior investigation

If you try to relocate the server for business continuity, it may actually happen that the server is broken because the road codition is too bad. We experienced it in Thailand, India, Brazil etc.

As for networks, bandwidth may not be sufficient when crossing countries or regions, so you need the sufficient prior investigation .

If you think that social infrastructure such as electricity, roads, water and sewage, and transportation are as same as Japan, it will fail.
You must always conduct a thorough prior investigation (especially interview with local staff) and manage it as a risk.

<<Read [Part 14]Read [Part 16]>>

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