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Technology Stocks : TAVA Technologies (TAVA-NASDAQ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zebra 365 who wrote (10175)	2/1/1998 11:44:00 PM
From: Gerald L. Kerr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Avoid the Millennium Meltdown By Martin Piszczalski in Automotive Manufacturing & Production, November 1997 (Page 26) [Excerpt] General Motors chief information officer, Ralph Szygenda, estimated that GM alone has over 250,000 manufacturing devices on the shop floor with potential year 2000 problems. Industrial-control devices such as programmable logic controllers are likely to be especially problematic. Most were shipped years ago without documentation and tools to locate and change date-related computer instructions. Many control vendors, including some of the largest, are very cool to even helping their customers resolve this problem. Suppliers are another area of critical vulnerability. The prevalence of just-in-time, single-source suppliers exposes the entire industry to real nightmares. For instance, if a brake-valve supplier hits a year 2000 problem and is unable to ship it, it would shut down all of GM's assembly plants in just four days. With the entire industry predicated on on-time delivery performance, some suppliers will go bankrupt due to year 2000 problems. More insidiously, some lower-tier manufacturers will likely kill their customer firms by failing to deliver critical sole-source components. To highlight the severity of the hear 2000 problem, Chrysler recently called in the chief executive officers of its largest suppliers. Each was asked to report in detail what they are doing to handle the year 2000 problem. Suppliers should expect increasing scrutiny from their customers over this issue. Mandatory formal audits and certification programs are a very real possibility. Suppliers should expect OEM sourcing decisions to soon swing on year-2000-readiness ratings of suppliers. Lawyers, meanwhile, are gloating over the billions of dollars in lawsuits likely to flow from year 2000 snafus. In addition to the three mentioned, GM's Szygenda noted five other areas requiring major year 2000 scrutiny: * dealers * on-board vehicle elctronics * business systems * GM facilities (e.g. elevators, etc.) * engineering [I'm skipping some technical stuff here] [Concluding paragraph] The year 2000 challenge, therefore, requires manufacturers to reassess how they are now making core I.T. decisions. Only then will they likely enter the year 2000 with the plants humming versus staring at computer screens and dead in their tracks. *********** This magazine is available on the web at: gardnerweb.com However, this particular article by a guest contributor is only in the print version and is not available online. Gerry

To: Zebra 365 who wrote (10175)	2/2/1998 6:51:00 AM
From: Gerald Underwood	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Zebra, This is good advice. I myself have found that going back to TAVA's y2kone site has answered present questions that I did not have upon first reading. For instance: The hardware is upgraded first. Then, operating systems are upgraded or replaced. Next, packaged software fixes or upgrades are installed and custom code is updated. Testing and verifying upgraded systems is as important, and may be even more time consuming, than installing the upgrades themselves. Testing procedures have to be developed and then employed, system-by-system and component-by-component. Finally, training sessions on the new systems are scheduled for the operations and supervisory staffs. In keeping with the goal of using this occasion to improve performance of production operations, systems that may be obsolete or need performance improvements are planned for retirement or replacement. This would indicate to me that since many embedded processors are dependent upon the operating system or installed software for date instructions that many manufacturers might have been delayed in their efforts in implementation until their software vendors provided upgrades. Thus my perception of Wonderware Factorysuite2000 for instance has changed somewhat in that I now consider it not just a distribution channel, but a major impetus to companies using their software to get the rest of their y2k factory floor work started. This rollout removes a major bottleneck for organized implementation of the whole shooting match. Best Wishes, Gerry