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Technology Stocks : Year 2000 (Y2K) Embedded Systems & Infrastructure Problem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roleigh Martin who wrote (292)	3/28/1998 5:10:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

'The potential negative impact of a supply-chain failure on large corporations is significant. Boeing had a supply-chain failure in H2/97 that resulted in a $1.6 billion loss that caused production of the 747 jumbo and 737 models to be halted for one month. If similar failures occur across multiple industries as a result of Year 2000 problems, the results could be significantly worse and last much longer. The threat is particularly serious because many suppliers tend to be smaller companies with little knowledge of Year 2000 risks. <snip> 'Supply chains can be large, highly volatile and recursive in nature. Automotive industry supply chains have upwards of 60,000 unique suppliers that can change constantly. The recursive factor means that a company could feed tier five and tier two of the same supply chain. Documenting a complete supply chain is one of the most confounding challenges in the Year 2000 arena because it has never been done before. Two factors that facilitate this research effort require identifying a unifying agent to drive the process and a compelling reason for suppliers to collect and share this information. sentrytech.com

To: Roleigh Martin who wrote (292)	3/29/1998 5:10:00 AM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 618

Remediation strategy at a company 'I shall speak strictly off the record as a Project Manager for a sizable multi-national corporation that shall remain nameless. Their "big iron" is being converted to SAP R3 one site at a time, and each site is tested as they go. This effort is SIGNIFICANTLY better than most companies of their size. Budget: several million dollars (a fraction of 1% of annual revenues). However, their official position is NOT to update or replace desktop and client / server apps until early 1999 -- not one moment sooner. Ditto for replacement of non-compliant hardware and embedded systems (and they have quite a few). After all, we mustn't upset the shareholders with disappointing earnings. Budget: several more million dollars (another fractional percentage of annual revenues). Although workable, I am not nearly as pleased by the latter strategy. Unfortunately, as I understand from other Project Managers with whom I am in contact, this delayed response is rapidly becoming an unhealthy trend in certain corporate circles. Budgets are held hostage and hands are securely bound. Then again, my contract is up in another month, so I am thankful that I do not have to be present when employees are mimicking beheaded chickens while installing software and hardware upgrades during the eleventh hour. Nevertheless, I shall be carefully monitoring their progress over the remaining months, offering advice (wanted or otherwise) and moral support. Small, highly automated organizations may be expected to spend as much as 10% of annual revenues for FY98 and 15% of revenues for FY99. This will be difficult for some and debilitating for others, depending upon earnings. Waiting until AFTER 1/1/00 is pure madness! Selling the non-compliant organization to an unsuspecting buyer is not a viable alternative at his time. Borrowing to correct deficiencies will become next to impossible for all be a chosen few. Ciao, Scott " hope for the best, but prepared for the worst" Secor ________ Subject: Re: Informal Survey - Y2K and Budgets Date: Sat, 28 Mar 1998 02:15:15 -0600 From: "D. Scott Secor - Millennial Infarction Mitigator" <y2k@uswest.net.NO$PAM> Organization: Bon Bahn Communications / The Legacy Group Newsgroups: comp.software.year-2000 References: 1