To: John Howell who wrote (19250 ) 6/25/1998 9:15:00 PM From: Bonzo Read Replies (1) | Respond to
John I'm not going down this road again having done so on this board several times in the past, most notably with Mike Winn. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt. The fact is there are many factories who are still utilizing systems that are outdated and unsupported. The vendors are gone (out of business or consolidated) or will not support the equipment any longer due to obsolescence. Some of these systems date back to the late 1970's. The factory engineers in many cases, do not have the resources to fully assess and or remediate the problems on their own (no source code or detailed operational data - theory of operation etc.) I have done business in the electronic test area for 25 years and I can assure you many of these systems are kluged together with code so poorly documented that its nearly impossible to re-program or remediate so replacement is the only economically viable option. Yes most of the systems and components mfg. in the past several years are Y2K compliant or insensitive, but the majority of the problems reside in older systems and components that are unsupported from vendors, OEMs and resident source code. This is where TAVA's expertise, database, methodology and alliances provide it with an advantage. Why would an IT company want to venture into the factory? What expertise do they have with sensors, valves, Programmable Logic Controllers, and Distributed Control Systems? Nor do they work at the Circuit board, logic device or nodal level. PROMS, MicroControllers, PLD's? Do you think a COBOL programmer would know the difference? Why would he care? Finally, all embedded controlled devices will have to be tested in order to certify or validate a Y2K compliance report. This is a simple but tedious task indeed. TAVA's main competition in the factory is Raytheon Automation - this from John Jenkins himself. (told me personally at a RedChip luncheon I had with him). Also you are correct in that there are many vendors and OEM's who are providing support to their customers, but the market is so large (50 billion controllers in tens of thousands of factories, Utitlity Companies, Hospitals etc.) that there is more than enough business for everyone. Jenkins told me that TAVA is resolving only mission critical systems at this time. There is not enough time to do it all. So as I said, TAVA's business is not threatened by competition from the IT remediators. Furthermore, they have been able to leverage their business in the following ways:
