TAVA addresses GM in their conference call:
(look at the last paragraph)
Kevin Fallon: ÿYes. I'd like to give just a quick backdrop of GM. In our feeling, General Motors and Kraft are actually in the lead position in the Y2K rollout. And General Motors wrote a test document that's rapidly being adopted as the industry standard. And obviously, in any information, one issue is quantity, but the more important thing is quality.
What we're seeing is a lot of the vendors and suppliers are claiming that their products are compliant when, indeed, through tests and further research, it's found out that the products are not compliant.
So General Motors has written a test document that now has been adopted by AIAG, which is the Automotive Industry Action Group. And, from my belief, Chrysler and Ford have adopted this same standard.
And we've taken this standard out across other industries to try and get the awareness up and get a higher bar, so to speak, on this whole compliance issue in the process area and the embedded systems.
I tell you we're getting down to our relationship with General Motors. We have several contracts with them.
One is working with one of their divisions, Allison Transmissions. We have- there's a small contract today.
We are also part of their standards team that's evolving and developing that GM standard that's just been adopted by IEEE out there, and we have two voting members on the IEEE year 2000 subcommittee for manufacturing and embedded systems.
Also we are working with GM, and finalizing discussions, and working in research and testing as opposed to the standard document itself. And we're involved with them in their supply chain just launching right now, moving out to look at the Y2K readiness of many of their suppliers, as I mentioned earlier.
Jeff Whitehorn: ÿ
... So I was wondering, given General Motors and given how global they are and given what the potential is, what realistically- what part of General Motors and the value for that might we see come to you in the next, you know, two years?
Kevin Fallon: ÿJeff, I can't really comment on that value and anticipated growth. ... And obviously, they're vast and expansive. But we feel that we enjoy a very great relationship today with General Motors and look forward to growing it.
Jeff Whitehorn: ÿI tried this before. I'm going to beat this dead horse then cease and desist. Is it even fair to say that within two years, while General Motors may not be, you know, one of those customers that you have to put in 10-Q because they're 10 percent of your revenues, if they're negligible or a few hundred thousand now, you expect that to grow between zero and 5 or 6 percent over a two-year period?
John Jenkins: ÿI think that's a fair minimalist approach. I think the critical thing that Kevin was trying to set up on General Motors is that they are- obviously their name is recognized, and they've been going down the path of Y2K readiness longer than many other organizations. They have a huge supply chain impact.
So being up close and personal with GM, even though they are highly internal activated, if you will-they're using a significant number of internal people to address their own problems-has nothing but positive leverage and spinout for us. I mean, to be, I suppose, brutally honest there's probably more commercial opportunity available to us with less hassle dealing with their supply chain than there is in dealing with Mother GM herself.
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