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To: John Mansfield who wrote (18500)	6/16/1998 5:02:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 31646

Repost - Unilever trebling y2k costs; especially because of embedded systems remediation 'December 21 1997 BUSINESS NEWS Costs soar as suppliers struggle Millennium bug alarms Unilever UNILEVER, the Anglo-Dutch consumer-products giant, has trebled to œ300m its estimate of the cost of eliminating the millennium computer "bug" from its operations. Niall FitzGerald, chairman of the British arm, warned last week that up to a fifth of its small and medium-sized suppliers may not have fully removed the bug by January 1, 2000. Unilever's discovery that the cost of fixing the bug is far higher than anticipated, and FitzGerald's warning about the risk to smaller suppliers, will sound an alert throughout British industry. "I'm concerned that up to one-fifth of our suppliers worldwide may not be fully ready for 2000," said FitzGerald. Unilever has set its executives the target of ensuring their operations are 2000-compliant by next October. In common with many big companies, it is likely to drop suppliers if it concludes that they will not be ready for 2000. The group is warning of the disruption to the business cycle the bug will cause, with takeover activity likely to dry up and huge inventory-building expected to create buffer stocks ahead of January 1, 2000. Iain Anderson, Unilever's technology director and a British Telecom (BT) non-executive, said last week: "There will effectively emerge a sterile zone for acquisitions. I don't know when it will start, but I doubt if there will be many acquisitions after September 1999." Unilever's comments will attract the attention of the government, whose efforts to tackle the bug in Whitehall and to alert business to its danger have been criticised by Robin Guernier, head of the independent Taskforce 2000, which is trying to raise awareness of the threat. The problem has arisen because many computer systems use only two digits, rather than four, for dating purposes. When the year changes from 99 to 00, experts say many applications will crash or create data that are, literally, rubbish. Many systems in the food industry would, for example, decide goods so labelled were out of date and should be scrapped. Anderson said the costs of tackling the bug were soaring because of the scale of the problem, particularly concerning so-called "embedded" chips - microchips installed deep in manufacturing equipment and computer systems whose software has to be checked line by line and, if necessary, rewritten ... sunday-times.co.uk

To: John Mansfield who wrote (18500)	6/16/1998 5:03:00 PM
From: John Mansfield	Respond to of 31646

Repost 'TECHNICAL - Non-IT y2k: 'it is always amazing how quickly the denial disappears....' From the SIM discussion board. John ----- '61. Author: Kevin O'Hara ( kgohara ) Date: Feb. 16 1:21 AM 1998 The situation in Australia sounds similar to the USA. Major manufacturing firms are only now beginning to address the Non-IT aspect of Year 2000. It is interesting to note that these companies have usually had Year 2000 projects underway for their IT systems for some time, and usually deny that there are any problems on the factory floor. We are a consulting company specialising in embedded systems, and it is always amazing how quickly the denial disappears when we show the client actual examples of where their systems are impacted by Year 2000 problems. To identify many of the problems, we actually scan the PLC application code and other software applications used within the manufacturing process. We can then direct attention to the exact area where systems will be impacted and acurately predict the failure mode and remedial actions required. Is this the standard way that others on the list are approaching Year 2000 impact analysis of critical manufacturing systems? Regards Kevin O'Hara Y2K Integration Sydney Australia '