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To: John Mansfield who wrote (9260)	1/22/1998 2:47:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 31646

Wonderware Corporation FactorySuite Year 2000 Product Support pantek.co.uk (distributing partner of Wonderware) The overall impression of this document IMO: Those guys really know what they are doing and what they are talking about. Very detailed, useful information on how testing was done; how problems were remediated etc. Many how-to's (e.g. patches of OS like NT 3.51). Impressive! Good partner for other co's, IMO. John -------- Of special interest: '3. Testing Considerations Special test cases were developed by Wonderware's QA Department to ensure Year 2000 support for the following InTouch subsystems and components: History, HistData, HistMerge, Alarms, Installation, Licensing and Conversion. Testing has been performed primarily on English-language versions of InTouch. Ongoing testing of Localized releases of InTouch will continue. Should a customer wish to perform their own Year 2000 compliance testing, we suggest the following: Test both the time period 1999 to 2000 and the time period immediately following the turn of the century. The year 2000 is Leap Year - test February 29, 2000 Take care in setting the date ahead - passwords, userids, and product licenses might expire Use a separate system for testing Handle backup data and programs correctly Utilize a method to age the date information in your application data to ensure a thorough test <snip> 5. Wonderware Year 2000 Product Support Matrix <snip> 6.0 Frequently Asked Questions <snip> 6.3 Q What testing procedures have been used to QA products for the Year 2000? A QA tests for the boundary case and the general year 2000 case. The boundary case is tested by running the application from the year 1999 to the year 2000.. 6.4 Q How has the product been modified to support the year 2000? A Issues have existed regarding the historical subsystem and the WWLogger. These issues were resolved for FactorySuite 1000. There was also an issue with _localtime function in NT 3.51 which has been resolved in SP5. A possibility of a patch for InTouch 5.1b NT exists, but testing still needs to be done. '

To: John Mansfield who wrote (9260)	1/22/1998 3:21:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Plant Information at the Desktop: a strategic solution to the problem of getting batch information from different control systems to the corporate desktop wbf.org This has been discussed some time ago by CK. This document is a good and detailed description of plant-floor - MIS integration; the business that TAVA will be in increasingly after 2000 (leveraging their accumulated detailed know-how of lots of plant floors). John ------- Plant Information at the Desktop, Exploiting Corporate IT Infrastructure Ray Bolton, ZENECA Pharmaceuticals, England Introduction Automated batch manufacture of products should present an ideal opportunity to collect appropriate raw data which will assist the production staff. Their information needs will differ significantly e.g. Quality assurance /exception reporting of individual batches to support product release. Process improvement by comparison of multiple batches and in depth analysis of individual batches. These goals have been difficult to realize for many reasons. There are no standards which define what raw event and measurement data should be recorded and under what circumstances to facilitate later analysis. Commercial batch control systems differ greatly in what they record about a batch and how it is made available. Production staff don¡t understand SQL (structured query language) and few software people in corporate information systems departments understand batch control! Until recently, there were no standards to suggest a control philosophy for the automation of batch plants. S88.01 addresses some of these issues but not what data needs to be recorded. Strategy for batch information at the desktop ZENECA has clearly defined strategies, based on Microsoft technology, for IT infrastructure across its businesses. Our strategy for batch information at the desktop was based on: Initial prototyping of a batch data collection/analysis tool to understand real user requirements and identify essential raw data required to satisfy these requirements. Work with control system vendors to ensure raw data is produced. Develop a generic batch event recording/Server system which complied with corporate standards. Develop a generic user friendly batch analysis tool available across the company Some initial prototyping work was done to import messages from our batch control systems and generate interactive views of the data using forms. The prototype tool was demonstrated to production/development/QA people at several ZENECA sites and comprehensive user requirements were developed. This process revealed that our control systems were not recording certain raw data which was vital for later analysis. We concluded that certain basic raw data was essential for each event to allow ZEBADEE (ZENECA batch data exchange environment) to configure itself by analyzing the event data in detail. We worked closely with our control system vendors to ensure that a standard message format was used. <snip> Development of the batch information client The desktop application is the key component of our batch information at the desktop strategy. It was designed to satisfy the diverse requirements of production, QA and process improvement teams. <snip> Conclusions With careful planning, it is possible to define a strategic solution to the problem of getting batch information from different control systems to the corporate desktop.'