MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS AND YEAR 2000:To protect and extend
October, 1997
Remediating mainframe systems-a likely millennium scenario
Roberto Michel,Associate Editor
Mainframe-based systems and memory-saving programming tactics are viewed as
major culprits in the Year 2000 computing crisis. When programmers of decades
past used 2-digit data structures to represent years, rather than 4-digit structures,
they did so to conserve then-precious storage space, assuming systems would not
be used into the new millennium.
The fact is that systems have lasted longer than anticipated. The good news here is
that many companies have received a high degree of value from their systems. And
while Year 2000 problems can exist in client/server and midrange systems, for
many manufacturers, mainframe systems remain a viable solution if they can be
"remediated" to recognize the new century properly. Especially with larger, multisite
organizations where diverse, multiplatform systems are the norm, it's likely some
mainframe applications will be remediated as part of Year 2000 projects.
American Greetings, a manufacturer of greeting cards and other personal
expression products with 1996 annual revenues of more than $2 billion, is one
company that chose to remediate several key legacy systems. The
Cleveland-based company also uses some millennium-ready client/server systems,
but fixing its legacy systems is its core approach to solving the Year 2000 problem.
The project began in June 1996 with assessment of key applications and systems,
says Pamela Riley, workgroup leader for Year 2000 services. In addition to
dedicating internal information services (IS) staff to the task, American Greetings
also turned to Information Management Resources (IMR), a Year 2000
software consulting firm based in Clearwater, Fla., to help analyze and fix its
systems. IMR's services have accelerated the project and allowed American
Greetings' IS staff to concentrate on more tactical IS concerns. But a great deal of
a Year 2000 project's success still hinges on internal commitment, said Riley,
speaking at a Year 2000 conference held in Chicago in June.
"The success of a project starts with the support of upper management," says Riley.
"At American Greetings, we've received a high level of support."
The terminology used to describe the stages of Year 2000 projects differ, but IMR
breaks down remediation projects into five stages: impact analysis, conversion
planning, conversion, testing, and implementation. Already, one major
mainframe-based application for master production scheduling has been
implemented, and analysis and conversion planning was completed on all critical
applications last November. Overall, Riley estimates the project will be complete
by June 1999, with the more mission-critical applications completed long before
then.
Though much attention has been given to the various methods of conversion, Riley
says analysis and conversion planning are central to the success of a project. "It's
all about the risks you decide you want to expose your organization to," says Riley.
"The actual changes you make typically aren't that complex."
The analysis found that the company had a total of 109 applications, 12 of which
were compliant, and seven of which were deemed obsolete. A total of 72
applications, or two-thirds of all programs, will need some repair, but those repairs
will amount to only three percent of all lines of code in the organization. So while
the scope of analysis is wide, actual conversion is minimal.
"If we can avoid making changes we will," says Riley. "The business requirements
and risks have to drive the project. For instance, with the order processing systems
that are at the core of our business, we are going to be much more rigorous in our
analysis and testing than with some other systems."
The primary method of conversion used was expansion. There are two basic
approaches to converting code-physically expanding date structures to four digits
or using interpretive programming adjustments so 2-digit structures fall into the
proper century. At American Greetings, expansion of date structures wasn't
extended to on-screen formatting or reports, since such a change would basically
be cosmetic, and take up more room on screens and reports.
Actual conversion of applications began last December, with some of the work
being done off-site by IMR. The project uses a dedicated test environment, in
which source code is copied and moved to test systems where special testing tools
are used to isolate problems. Meanwhile, production systems stay on-line, and
changes made to actual code are retrofitted into the live systems later.
The final testing step is acceptance testing in which changes to applications are
tested on-line to ensure the system functions properly. Acceptance testing at
American Greetings was done not only by project staff, but by end-users of the
applications, says Riley. All told, the various stages of testing are predicted to be
the most resource-intensive portion of the Year 2000 project, amounting to about
40 percent of total cost.
A challenge for the project team was the diversity of sites, operating systems,
databases, and programming languages used within the enterprise. "Having many
systems is a challenge," says Riley. "There is no easy way around it, other than
having a well-balanced team, good communication, and follow through. No
specialist can find and fix all the problems in an organization of our size. You have
to constantly communicate to locate all the risks and problems."
Since applications are remediated one at a time, another consideration is getting
non-compliant systems to interact with compliant ones. A variety of "bridges" can
be used for this task, says Riley, such as programs that add or remove century
references in batch format. Adding program logic that wraps around
date-dependent points in applications or recompiling programs in other applications
are other options.
Taken in total, the size and complexity of a Year 2000 compliance project can be
intimidating, admits Riley. She urges a phased approach for examining the problem
so that managers don't get bogged down in the details of the entire task. "The
scope of an entire project can be overwhelming, but it can be taken step by step,"
she says. "The important thing is to get started and use a methodology that gives |
