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LONG BEACH, Miss. - It's been nearly a year since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, displacing thousands of families and bringing the wheels of commerce to a screeching halt. Even now, 11 months later, it's hard to believe how much the area lost. On sites where grand homes once stood and kempt yards once flourished now remain only broken porches and crumbling stairs - haunting metaphors for those who still reside in the region.
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For companies like Long Beach, Miss.-based Triton Systems, the road back has been a long one. Last week, ATM Marketplace paid Triton a visit to discuss the company's recovery efforts since Katrina.
The long end of the stick
Triton was lucky. Despite costing the company millions of dollars in lost operations and repairs, Katrina only damaged portions of Triton's administrative and manufacturing facilities. Power was restored within days, not weeks, and Triton employees found solace in coming back to work.
But Katrina is still a tough subject to broach. Ask anyone at Triton, from executive to manager to employee, about the storm, and the reaction is always an emotional one.
Katrina hit the Gulf Coast Aug. 29. Three days later, Triton reopened Triton West, the 88,000-square-foot facility that houses Triton's ATM plant and employs a staff of about 250 - more than half of the company's U.S. employee base, which totals 431.
John Saik led ATM Marketplace on a tour through Triton West. When asked to reflect on the days immediately following Katrina, Saik could barely hold back his emotions.
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"On the 17th day, we made our first shipments," said Saik, Triton's vice president of operations. "People were glad to get back to work and to share their stories with one another. We couldn't have done it without the people we have here."
Two weeks after Katrina, Triton was back to full-day operation. On Sept. 12, it shipped 25 units.
In spite of Katrina, Triton in 2005 increased its U.S. ATM shipments 21 percent from 2004 and stayed on track with the prototype launch of its FT7000.
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| (Photograph by Tracy Kitten) Sites like the lone stairs shown above are common along the Gulf Coast. This photograph was taken in Pass Christian, just down from the site of Triton's first headquarters. |
In June 2006, Triton built 2,700 ATMs - its highest-ever production month.
Talk to folks at Triton about the turnaround, and they'll tell you it was willpower that kept everything up and running. The staff's optimism and positive attitude have undoubtedly had a huge impact on Triton's ability to recover, Saik said.
Mitigating risk
Since Katrina, Triton has taken steps to mitigate risk and vulnerability. On July 5, it opened a 15,000-square-foot facility in Memphis, where the company will provide technical services, training, and parts and finished-goods shipments.
The new facility employs about 30 and was part of Triton's growth plan before Katrina. But consequences from the storm have made location diversification more of a necessity, said vice president Mary Edith Dressel.
"Memphis will be our core facility for technical support and we (in Long Beach) will be the back-up site," Dressel said. "It's a major step for us. We wanted, after Katrina, to come up with a way to provide field service remotely."
Because of the Memphis facility's proximity to the FedEx hub, Triton expects to get its products and parts out to the market more quickly and with shorter notice from distributors, she said.
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| (Photograph submitted by Triton) Shown above is Triton's first facility, which was located in Pass Christian. The site opened in 1979. |
Triton's international growth has indirectly assisted the company's plan for geographic diversification. Triton last year increased the size of its Canadian facility, where it employs 25 people, by 10,000 square feet. The company also employs 35 people in the United Kingdom. And since Katrina, Triton has opened a software office in India and now employs 10 people in Asia-Pacific.
Looking back
In January, Triton reviewed its disaster-recovery action plan. From a facility-structure standpoint, Triton was prepared for Katrina, Dressel said. The company's disaster and emergency management team had been meeting for years prior to Katrina.
What Triton didn't anticipate, she said, were the collapse of the communications infrastructure and the displacement of employees.
Triton's Katrina Fund, which included donations from the far-reaching corners of the ATM industry, raised $650,000 - an amount that was given to employees to help them get back on their feet. That fund is expected to remain active for the short-term.
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| (Photograph by Tracy Kitten). A Triton employee tests audio response on the 9100. |
To address the communication issue, Triton invested in satellite phones, which also can be spotty but offer the best alternative. And to address the fuel shortage, which adversely affected people in Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Tennessee, the company has signed a contract with a tanker company, Dressel said.
"We took those things we didn't think about before and wrote all of that into the new plan," she said.
