Don Hutchinson's Meeting with TPRO Rep in CA PART 2
9) General Comments made by Tava manager(s) re Y2K
Easy to sell because it "scares the cr*p out of 'em."
Client management sees more threat from unknown than severity
of the problem
The factory Y2K problem is enormous
Big mid-west auto mfctr $60-$80million Y2K project (Tava is
in discussions with them)
The golden egg for Topro will be after the year 2000: Tava
will have on their database the most comprehensive
factory floor inventory of anyone.
Hiring qualified staff is difficult. The most qualified
candidates are maintenance people and ex-Navy people.
All engineers hired and Sales people go through Y2K
training in Phoenix.
The Vision Engineering acquisition went smoothly.
The Tava business has expertise in a variety of geographic
markets now as a result of the acquisitions.
10) Y2K Work
xxxxxxxxx (big beef/milk supplier for US):
Here's their immediate Y2K problem:
Milk leaves ranch
Arrives at dock of Market distributor
Expiration shows a 00 expiration
Automatically rejected at the dock and sent back to
xxxxxx because milk is 100 years old
Milk gets back to xxxxxx, must be tossed because now
it really IS old by the time it took to ship it
back and forth.
yyyyyyyyyy (big food supplier)
Run from the Sacramento office
n plants across country
Tava has 19 person team, 4 from here, others from other
offices. Don't know actually how many factories
they are working in at this point.
Tava is finding 90-92% software compliance
They're finding 70% hardware compliance (PCS, BIOS,
Imbedded controllers, alarm systems)
Also, Tava is discovering that yyyyy's Unix-based systems
have Y2K problems. (Why Tava is dealing with Unix,
I don't know) They believe this to be a generic
problem across virtually all Unix systems.
A test was run on one of their manufacturing lines where
date was put to 2000. The whole line shut down. We
were told "That scared the cr*p out of senior
management!"
Senior management at yyyyy instructed plant managers to be
"forward looking" but not to simply replace their
entire factory if they can avoid it. Point is and
I'm paraphrasing the Tava manager, 'senior
management really does not have a clue what's going
on at the factory floor and what they don't know
scares them.' Tava is seeing this management
mind-set elsewhere, not only at yyyyyy. Factory
floor managers are being given more decision making
authority as a result but with guidelines.
We were told to look for a yyyyyy announcement in January.
They have asked yyyyy if they could announce but
yyyyy wants to see some more results from Tava Y2K
work.
zzzzzz (aerospace manufacturer)
Tava is doing Y2K work for zzzz. We didn't discuss the
specifics on this though.
IVAX We also didn't discuss the IVAX Y2K work in detail
11) We were shown the PlantY2kOne binder which contains hardcopy
versions of all the input screens on the CD. The CD
facilitates keyboard input into the input fields allowing for
easy electronic transmission to Westchester.
12) We were also shown a 200 page compliance report done for a
client. We do not know which client. Each page is devoted to
describing the imbedded component and indicating whether it is
compliant or not. The page is filled from top to bottom with
information about that one component. Each page costs the
client $200.
13) Opinions about the information we received. In most cases,
the four of us share these opinions:
The Tava database is centrally the most important asset they
own.
Yes, the market is enormous and immediate for PlantY2KOne.
But, if you think of all the factory floors in just the US ,
look at how many staff Tava can bring to bear on a project,
you quickly run out of resources. Somehow, IMHO, Y2K cash
flow will have to become less dependent on Tava people being
at Client sites.
My opinion: If the Tava business plan calls for staff to be at
Y2K cites, then Tava is a perfect take-over candidate for a
larger organization that CAN provide additional staff and
fully leverage the Tava database.
Tava name recognition is an issue. The name is new to factory
floor people. The Tava database in the hands of a more
recognized name would be better. Time is running out.
The embedded controller Y2K problem is HUGE worldwide.
Coming away from the meeting I personally felt that my focus
should be on building awareness of the Y2K embedded problem.
(Cheryl has been doing this all along.) There is absolutely
no way that our little Tava is going to help but a handful of
the factory floors out of this problem.
My opinion: the Government should mandate corporations with
imbedded controllers to go through at least the assessment
phase with Tava. |
