Suppliers to the motor industry, including freight and forwarding companies, are going to have to ensure their systems are Year 2000 compliant warns Delta's director of information technology and strategic planning, Evan Dold.
Port Elizabeth - based Delta has established a special Millenium Bug task team to tackle the problem. The team is assessing all possible effects of the problem, both within the company and in its supply and distribution chains.
No-one in the motor industry really knows just how big the problem is yet, says Dold. We're currently auditing our systems and interfaces to systems outside of Delta to ensure there are no unpleasant surprises as we go into the new century. Most business software is heavily dependent on dates to control its processing, therefore the impact of incorrect date calculations could be far reaching. In a worst-case scenario for the motor industry, assembly lines could be disrupted, the onboard computer of your motor vehicle could show erroneous information and dealers could find their customer database corrupted. Companies like Delta, which use just-in-time production practices are assessing the risks both within their company and their supply-chain.
The problem faced by everyone in the chain is that fixing systems so that they are Year 2000 compliant can be expected to be expensive - and the only return is staying in business.
The motor industry in South Africa - and, indeed, throughout the world - is highly competitive, with tremendous pressures on reducing costs and improving efficiencies. We could all do without the potentially huge costs of fixing the problem, says Dold.
He expects far more companies to start dealing seriously with the year 2000 problem as stakeholders and decision-makers begin realising that their company will be threatened if it doesn't address the problem.
The impact could range from inconvenient to catastrophic. Any manufacturer who hasn't upgraded his system in time will be at a strategic disadvantage.
The problem lies in the way computers were programmed in the days when disk space was both expensive and scarce. Programmers decided to leave out the 19 in the dates. So, instead of recording 1997, the computer stores 97. That works until your database or whatever other program your computer is running reaches 2000, or 00. The problem has a number of names, including the millenium bug, and the Year 2000 problem. It is the wider effects of the problem have to be calculated by the motor companies - which is the reason the three vice-presidents for purchasing at Chrysler, Ford and General Motors in the United States signed a letter encouraging suppliers to immediately address the problem. The letter, sent to members of the Automobile Industry Action Group (AIAG), a not-for-profit trade organisation, warns simply that , unless the Year 2000 problem is addressed soon, it will be too late for many of its members to head off a company crisis. Computer-regulated parts deliveries might not be made, companies may not make payroll or pension payments and some machines could go haywire or simply stop working. It has been estimated that a typical mid-sized company has 8000 legacy programmes supporting its business operations, containing a total of 12 million lines of code. On average, 1 of every 50 lines of code has a date reference. Depending on the language used and the complexity of the system, the time required to modify this amount of code may be measured in staff years, and it already may be too late for some companies to begin managing this problem.
By Ed Richardson
