John,
With respect to catching up. I used to agree with your position.
However I don't anymore for the following reasons.
First take Tava's database. They have 10,000 items.
So an initial assumption would be that a competitor would have to assess 10,000 items for compliance to catch up.
But now I think no. That each industry will have items specific to that industry.
Of course there will probably be some overlap but just as an example maybe out of 10,000 items, the utility industry might have only 2000. (example only.)
If you look at the ERPI faq sheet this notion is confirmed - i.e. the data developed is not readily transferable to other industries.
And the Jan. 29 press release says R.W. Beck will among other things "extend Tava's compliance database to include process automation components commonly applied in power generation, transmission and distribution."
Second this press release raises another point. Tava hasn't been working on a database specific to the utility for that long a period of time. Of if so one must assume they decided they needed to help. We don't know exactly when they started working together.
But the press release is only about a month old.
Give them 3 months that still is not that big a head start on the database portion.
Third. If you assume as I do now that each industry has it's own set of components
and equipment, then Tava has spread it's effort presumably over multiple industries.
Since only 20 people have been devoted to the whole project, since June anyway,
it is reasonable to assume that only a small portion of the effort has been devoted to utilities. So that's not much of a head start. And we don't know how much experience those individuals had with the utility industry. Clearly Tava determined they needed help.
(This possibility that every industry has it's own unique set of equipment etc. makes it clear to me that Tava with 20 or whatever number of people cannot even remotely compete with concentrated cooperative industry efforts - if they were launched.)
Compare that to EPRI's program or at least it's potential. There are 50 utilities signed up now. Suppose each one only operates one plant and only one person at each plant will be involved with the embedded program. That's still 50 people with direct experience in the utility industry. They could catch up very rapidly to Tava on a utility compliance database. (And suppose instead of one plant the avg. was 2,3 etc. Also note they hope to have 100 participants.
Or suppose more than one person was devoted to the problem per plant. You would now be talking about an enormous manpower advantage.)
Fourth. R.W. Beck will help equalize this manpower and experience But we don't know how many people of theirs have been assigned to year 2k.
And further R.W. Beck's people have no self-evident experience with respect to year 2k over anybody else with utility experience. They will need to be trained in the year 2k aspects just like anybody else.
Fifth Tava doesn't have that big a head start with respect to hands on year 2k experience at utilities. (i.e. developing solutions.) Of the 30 clients they have so far with their 100 or 250 sites,
we don't know how many if any are utilities - with the exception of the very recent
contracts with Pacific Corp and CMS.
Sixth as I think about it, I don't think inventorying your system is that big a deal as far as the method is concerned - which may be one reason Tava is giving away the methodology for free.
If you read the article written by Tava's engineer, Jacobsen, it seems to me it is mostly just the drudge work of going through floor plans and process flow diagrams.
To me it seems an engineer familiar with his plant would be far better suited to this task than Tava.
Also note that you can use any common database program to compile your inventory.
Also you were talking in the clubhouse about a British company which offered embedded system services. The database you were talking about was imo just a model structure - you know these are the fields that should be included.
Meaning such information is pretty basic and easily transferable over the web by an organization like ERPI.
Seventh. It seems to me that after plant personnel the first place I would turn to would be to system integrators familiar with my plant - this both for the inventory and the solution phase. Second to people like R.W. Beck who were familiar with the utitlity industry. And only lastly to someone like Tpro with limited experience in the utility industry.
Eighth Although Tava may have a large database we don't know how much of that is relatively simple to put together. Some of the larger component companies have evaluated their own products. So let's assume that 50% of the components in the utilities are by main stream manufacturers. That would make compiling that part of the database relatively easy.
Ninth ERPI would be putting few or no engineers on the project the way I envision it.
They would basically act as a clearing house and organizer of data.
They would take the data submitted by the engineers working at Factory A and enter it into the database. This would be very simple if a common database structure and language were used.
Tenth. People have said that every component has to be tested.
Well this is an area I am weak on. But that strikes me as very implausible.
You probably have to look at every component.
But it seems to me that some components are clearly not going to be date dependent.
In fact it seems that everyone concedes that the overwhelming majority are not.
One figure is only 5%. The other given by Tava is 30%.
Also it seems to vary from industry to industry. The food and drug industry having a far higher % of date sensitive components.
John, most of the above is with respect to the notion that an industry working together to solve this problem could catch up to Tava very quickly and not need their services.
Obviously the effort has to be a serious one. I cannot judge whether EPRI embedded program is serious or not. (Although it seems so to me.) If not then they provide no competition to Tava.
If it is they do - competition in the sense that they enable utilities to do work which absent ERPI they would have to turn Tava.
People seem to think it is absurd that the industry could work together in a non-competitive manner to solve this problem. I find it even more absurd to believe that they wouldn't in the face of what some claim could be a catastophe.
RS
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