Why GM signed a Y2K Contract with TAVA
================================================================
Automotive Manufacturing & Production, November 1997 (Page 26)
================================================================
EXCERPT
General Motors chief information officer, Ralph Szygenda, estimated that GM alone has over 250,000 manufacturing devices on the shop floor with potential year 2000 problems. Industrial-control devices such as programmable logic controllers are likely to be especially problematic.
Most were shipped years ago without documentation and tools to locate and change date-related computer instructions.
Many control vendors, including some of the largest, are very cool to even helping their customers resolve this problem.
Suppliers are another area of critical vulnerability. The prevalence of just-in-time, single-source suppliers exposes the entire industry to real nightmares. For instance, if a brake-valve supplier hits a year 2000 problem and is unable to ship it, it would shut down all of GM's assembly plants in just four days.
With the entire industry predicated on on-time delivery performance, some suppliers will go bankrupt due to year 2000 problems.
More insidiously, some lower-tier manufacturers will likely kill their customer firms by failing to deliver critical sole-source components.
To highlight the severity of the hear 2000 problem, Chrysler recently called in the chief executive officers of its largest suppliers. Each was asked to report in detail what they are doing to handle the year 2000 problem.
Suppliers should expect increasing scrutiny from their customers over this issue. Mandatory formal audits and certification programs are a very real possibility. Suppliers should expect OEM sourcing decisions to soon swing on year-2000-readiness ratings of suppliers. Lawyers, meanwhile, are gloating over the billions of dollars in lawsuits likely to flow from year 2000 snafus.
In addition to the three mentioned, GM's Szygenda noted five other areas requiring major year 2000 scrutiny:
* Dealers
* On-board vehicle electronics
* Business systems
* GM facilities (e.g. elevators, etc.)
* Engineering
[I'm skipping some technical stuff here]
[Concluding paragraph]
The year 2000 challenge, therefore, requires manufacturers to reassess how they are now making core I.T. decisions. Only then will they likely enter the year 2000 with the plants humming versus staring at computer screens and dead in their tracks.
***********
"Avoid the Millennium Meltdown" By Martin Piszczalski
This magazine is available on the web at:
gardnerweb.com
However, this particular article by a guest contributor is only in the print version and is not available online.
Contributed by: Gerald Kerr |
