Fluor's Owen (and currently TPRO's) is everywhere....
Manufacturers May Grind Gears over Y2K Dates
Will the century date change become one huge wrench in the works of U.S. manufacturers? Quite
possibly. Industrial plants and factories are often packed to the rafters with highly automated, very
sophisticated, thoroughly integrated, and very date intensive information systems. Systems which
monitor and control production operations. Track inventory. Schedule maintenance. Communicate
with suppliers and customers. And much more.
Leading manufacturers have raised factory automation to the point where the factory itself is almost
one big machine. Synchronized to the minute. Linked inside and out. "Demand pulled" so that the
company builds only what it knows it will sell. But for all the innovation and productivity of
manufacturing companies today, Y2K is set to sound a discordant note among plant managers more
attuned to highly orchestrated plant operations. Two tiny digits may cause havoc among major
production systems. But unlike payroll, accounting or customer service, when production lines stop
running, revenues stop flowing. And that's the point at which, for many manufacturers, the fat lady
sings.
Clearly, there's much at stake. So why does the scope of so many corporate Year 2000 programs
stop at the factory gate? Why don't plant engineers-technical people to the core--respond
immediately to a major technical threat in their midst? Why is the Y2K marketplace focused so
completely on legacy administrative systems? Why are manufacturer's so slow to respond to a clear
and present business danger?
Fluor Daniel Systems Integration Director Ken Owen tried to answer these and other questions for
an SPG conference audience last week in Chicago. Fluor Daniel is an $11 billion worldwide
engineering construction company building a unique and much needed presence in the Y2K
marketplace among industrial clients. According to Owen, there is a huge amount of software in
plants and factories which is largely flying under the radar of many corporate Y2K efforts.
And then there's that other issue...in the manufacturing environment, the Year 2000 looms both big
and ugly.
Start with big. A single industrial plant is often honeycombed with date dependent systems. At the
high end, plant management systems perform advanced planning, supply chain management,
production scheduling, asset management (equipment maintenance), enterprise resource planning,
and shop floor transactions. Quality management systems may be conducting in-line and end of line
product testing. Process engineering may be performing document management and perhaps even
on-the-fly process modeling. At ground level, process information management systems are used to
control instrumentation, machinery, and robotics as well as the plant environment, waste
management, regulatory monitoring, facilities and the like. The date problem could be in
pre-compiled proprietary software programs found in process controllers and other devices which
operate machine functions on the shop floor; it could also be embedded into the microprocessors
and circuitry of sensors, actuators and similar units involved in real time manufacturing and facility
operations.
Think of a modern factory as one big clock. Dates are gathered and stored by data collection
systems, used to calibrate and turn equipment off and on, to set production cycles, to create product
records, to schedule equipment maintenance, and to timestamp products. Owen says big gets even
bigger as companies operate multiple plants, in numerous geographic locations, with different
manufacturing operations and varying levels of manufacturing complexity.
Meanwhile, strategies for coping with all of this manufacturing system resource may be weak,
perhaps even non-existent. On the corporate and administrative side of the house, the data center
has reduced risk of system failures through standardized practices like change and test management,
software version control, data base administration, and robust documentation. Manufacturing
environments generally march to a different and much faster drummer. In this environment, Owen
maintains production is all important and engineers are less likely to get bogged down in formal
approaches to software acquisition, development and maintenance. Companies create incentives
based on meeting weekly and monthly production quotas, not Y2K milestones, Owen says.
"People in plants are driven by operational metrics...it's very hard to break out of that mindset,"
Owen claims. "Mandates are fine, but unless the company says, 'this situation will be fixed, here are
the metrics you must meet, and here's how you will be monitored,' it's difficult to get the attention of
plant management." He maintains that it's also difficult for companies to cross the bridge from
mandates to metrics; meanwhile, the emphasis on "here and now" production requirements explains
why it is so hard for plant management to focus on a software problem many view as over two years
away.
Owen says few plants maintain IS support staff, so that means greater reliance on systems vendors
for the Y2K conversion. "Legacy tools may work for half of what we need," Owen says, "But I don't
think you're going to find a tool to scan the ladder and logic in a programmable logic controller."
These systems are almost never written in COBOL and, he says, often as not, source code is not
available. Owen says that compliance statements from software vendors may not always be
accurate. When the software is logic buried in an electronic device or circuitry, a compliance
statement may not even be available. "Equipment manufacturers will give you specifications, but they
don't generally test the date sensitivity of their products," Owen says, adding that providers may
answer specific questions, but it's often up to the customer to know what questions to ask. "You
want to know whether a product has a clock, if its chips use dates, whether the dates are absolute or
relative, where the logic resides in the system, what are the functions and specifications of the
modules in question. You need substantial subject matter expertise in process control,
instrumentation and the like to be able to ask the right questions."
Manifold date laden systems. A decentralized, perhaps non-existent approach to systems
management. Throw in hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of data feeds from suppliers, and the
situation for many companies can become down right ugly. So ugly, in fact, that Owen says some
manufacturing firms-when they finally understand the true scope of their exposure--are ready to hit
the panic button.
Owen says the Fluor Daniel approach gets risk back into perspective by looking at three broad
categories: business, including production, operations and economics; environment, covering areas
like regulations, emissions, and material handling; and safety. Other factors to be assessed, he said,
include the number and size of plants, location, complexity of operations, linkages, quality concerns,
and the probability of various problem scenarios.
Because the readiness of manufacturing systems goes so directly to the issue of whether or not
businesses will have a business in the Year 2000 and beyond, Owen tries to put his clients on a
combat footing. The process begins by identifying mission critical work flows. Work flows yield
operations; operations are composed of systems and applications. A framework is built, components
classified and priorities assigned.
If this is a war, Owen is ready to take casualties. "Define what you can get done," Owen says, "What
is most important to do and what can we let fail? Clients with a long list of mission critical systems
must go back and perform triage a second time. Important things may have to die."
Owen said this process may force some companies to make difficult strategic choices: closing
production lines, taking on new partners, making adjustments to production volumes, throughput
rates or yields, eliminating products which may be reaching the sunset stage of commercial viability.
Owen says decisions must be crisp, and that time cannot be wasted pondering ways to turn the date
change situation into a value added proposition.
In fact, the Fluor Daniel plan of battle avoids overly formal processes and methods. The idea here is
to eliminate critical risks while minimizing the expense of doing so. "Companies must survive," Owen
says, "This is not a game and it's not going away...it's a survival issue. So don't overdo the theoretical
aspects of this situation. Do what you need to do and move on." |
