'Michael Cohn is worried about Year 2000, and that's bothersome because
Cohn spends his time in companies' war rooms and Y2K trenches.
He's a former manager at IBM responsible for that company's Year 2000
consulting efforts in the Southeast. Today he has his own millennium
consulting company, MDY (which stands for month, date, year).
In his travels throughout Georgia and the nation, Cohn has compiled a list of
six mistakes companies make over and over again on their Year 2000
projects.
First, "companies still don't have a confident representation or estimate of the
embedded chip problem," he says.
And "there's a tremendous assumption that resources will be available in
1999, when there'll be a supply crunch that affects not only their vendors but
companies' own personnel who may be lured to other jobs."
Third, organizations still casually trust their vendors and suppliers. They're
simply not asking the right questions, he says. . . .
Fourth, companies simply aren't taking the time to really dig into the readiness
of their critical suppliers, Cohn says.
Next on his list: Organizations also have a false sense of confidence, the
attitude that "we've always made deadlines before, and we'll get the job done
this time, too." . . .
Fifth, firms are also coming up short on quality and testing. . . .
Finally, organizations, in Cohn's view, aren't managing their Y2K projects on
a daily basis and with a fine-toothed comb.
garynorth.com |
