This information comes from Information Week, 22 March, 1999. ------------[snips]------------------------ Coke Copes With Y2K As of the end of 1998, the company estimated that its total incremental Y2K-related costs will be $130 million to $160 million. Of this, $70 million has already been incurred. The company expects to complete its internal work "in all material respects" before Jan. 1. Coke has broken its Y2K efforts into several categories, including applications (mainframes, servers, and PCs), and infrastructure (hardware, software, networking, and voice and data communications). It's also working on non-IT systems such as equipment used to produce and distribute concentrates, syrups, and finished beverages. As of mid-January, Coke had completed revisions and testing for 37 of 46 applications deemed critical to the business. The others should be completed by June. Of about 2,500 other applications, 2,300 have been assessed; 1,200 needed fixes, and of those, 1,100 have been repaired and tested. The rest will be fixed by July, the company says. Coke had assessed about 84% of its infrastructure components by mid-January and was about halfway done with remediation and testing. All remediation and testing is expected to be completed by October. The company has also completed its assessments of all manufacturing programs, and 42 of 102 have been made compliant; the remainder should be fixed by July. Coke expects to complete all conversion and testing of facilities equipment by October. ---------------[end snips]------------------------

Holy Mackerel Link

A casual read of this says that they've finished 37 of 46 mission-critical applications and should be finished in June. Sounds pretty good. Could be better, but June is better than any month that ends in "er." But wait....What in the world is this? Manufacturing programs are not considered mission critical? Holy Mackerel! Only 42 of 102 systems AND an "er" month! What in the world is going through their minds? Manufacturing the product is the mostcritical mission of a company. I can see Coke executives sitting around next a table next February, all excited because their sales reports and accounting programs are operating perfectly...except for the fact that the numbers show that they didn't ship anything because they didn't finish all those manufacturing programs in time. As I've said many times before, many companies put the wrong people in charge of their y2k project teams. The priority should always be Materials, Manufacturing and Money - in that order. IT and accounting people are worried about counting the money when they should be worrying about have any money to count. If this is how Coke defines mission-critical systems, how many other manufacturing companies out there consider manufacturing their product to be outside their definition of mission critical? Does this mean investors have to ask if making the product is considered important by the company? Holy Mackerel.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 22, 1999

Answers

You've asked just what i was going to ask. I started to think about that post which asked the three questions related to govt computers and remediation(the 3 ques. survey). If in fact, less than 10% of its computer systems are mission critical, what do they do with the other 90+%?? Is this so? What are "mission critical" systems for a company/govt? Paychecks? Does the govt/company function without the use of the other systems?For how long? When/how do they fix those??

I was wondering- I'm not a computer person at all, so I don't have a background sufficient to know this info.

-- anita (hillsidefarm@drbs.com), March 22, 1999.

I heard several months ago that Coke was stockpiling raw materials in a big way. I sensed that Coke was considered the local poster child for manufacturing companies - the first to say that that level of contingency planning was prudent.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), March 22, 1999.

We have already seen how a company's or gov agency's compliance image is enhanced through the simple expedient of re-defining what is mission critical, and what isn't. If there had been a universal standard for "mission critical," then a lot more gov agencies, and probably a lot more private companies would not be nearly as close to y2k compliance as they now claim.

The think the "Incredibly Shrinking Mission Critical System List" story will present us with summer reruns in abundance.

-- LP (soldog@hotmail.com), March 22, 1999.

From a previous thread concerning the Senate Y2K hearing on food supply, February 5, 1999, brief notes:

"[Senator] Bennett asked [USDA rep] about mission critical band. Woteki said most organizations are working across the board, not just on mission criticals. But her focus is on mission criticals.

Bennett wondered if the Senate would be working on Y2K and asked the Sergeant at Arms, who is responsible for the computers. The man's response was 'really kinda frightening,' he said. S at A said all mission criticals would be working, but Bennett wondered about definition of mission critical. For instance, copy machines not deemed mission critical by S at A. If you're running for office and need to get out a mailing, copy machines are mission critical, but S at A didn't see it that way. Sure, you have all summer to fix mission criticals, but remember the copier."

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), March 22, 1999.

Are y'all really that hard up for bad news?

First. Nowhere did the article imply that manufacturing systems were not mission critical. The article states the effort is broken its Y2K efforts into several categories, including applications (mainframes, servers, and PCs), and infrastructure (hardware, software, networking, and voice and data communications). It's also working on non-IT systems such as equipment used to produce and distribute concentrates, syrups, and finished beverages. It then addresses the effort within the applications effort, where 37 of the 46 applications deemed critical had been completed.

Second, it does not appear Coke is redefining "mission-critical" to make its effort appear better; in fact, looking at the raw numbers, of the 1246 systems needing repairs, 1137 have been completed, or 91%. Looking at only the critical applications show only 80% complete.

Hoffmeister

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 22, 1999.

I don't agree Hoffmeister.

"The company has also completed its assessments of all manufacturing programs, and 42 of 102 have been made compliant; the remainder should be fixed by July. Coke expects to complete all conversion and testing of facilities equipment by October."

I think the above snip fairly reflects the best realistic appraisal of the company's status. If you choose to interpret that they are 80% complete on mission-critical preparation, then you have highlighted my purpose for posting. We interpret what's important to a business differently.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 22, 1999.

PNG Thanks.

... Coke is working with many of its key partners-bottlers, suppliers, vendors, customers, government regulatory agencies, and utilities-to determine their year 2000 readiness. By April, it expects to complete worldwide on-site reviews of suppliers identified as critical. By midyear, the company will also have contingency plans in place should any of its own systems or those of any key partners experience Y2K-related disruptions. These may include stockpiling raw and packaging materials, increasing inventory levels, and securing alternate sources of supplies.

We all interpret the news within our field of interest.

I look at this and think, if coke is stockpiling, creating contingencies, and securing alternate sources of supply, shouldnt communities and individuals be doing the same thing for their critical basic needs?

Why does Koskinen, et. al., encourage it for corporations, but discourage it for private citizens?

Diane

-- Diane J. Squire (sacredspaces@yahoo.com), March 22, 1999.

Why does Koskinen, et. al., encourage it for corporations, but discourage it for private citizens?

Could it be because they feel corporations are more important than private citizens. Nah...corps need customers, right? Or maybe not, if layoffs and downsizing are any indication.

What? Me, cynical? Man, I have got to stop posting early in the morning.

Hallyx

"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." --- Jean de La Bruyhre

-- Hallyx (Hallyx@aol.com), March 22, 1999.

Coca Cola and other products are not mission critical to our society. We would all be in a better state of health if we drank water, fruit juice, or milk, and Coke was not an option - especially kids who are frying their young nervous systems on caffeine.

-- health nut (y2cynic@nowhere.com), March 22, 1999.

PNG:

You miss my point. Comparing the 80% to the 91% was meant to answer the other posts, implying that Coke was boosting their compliance percentages by removing systems from the mission-critical list. My point was they would actually look better listing overall application status.

My main point was nothing in the article implies Coke does not view their manufacturing systems as mission-critical, which seemed to be the message of your post. The article used the term "critical" in regard to a subset of "applications", not as a subset of the whole.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 22, 1999.

Thanks, PNG. Coke is not the only place where manufacturing takes a bit of a backseat.

I work for a Fortune 500 company. Spoke with a systems analyst in the IT department. A real DGI concerning Y2K, "it's a mostly scam to make money, blah blah blah."

Me: "So how is Y2K remediation at XXXX XXXXX going?"

"Fine, we went to client-server technology starting a couple years ago. Good thing we did; the mainframe stuff would have just blown up. We do have some upgrades to the Unix applications still to go."

Me: "So how about the manufacturing environment?"

"Well, they're planning on doing an upgrade and implementation of a new version of CINCOM [an automated inventory and bill-of-material management package] Real Soon Now."

Me: "When?"

"I'm not sure. Soon."

Me: "How about the robotics?"

"Don't think there's any problem there." [Have these actually been checked? I don't know.]

Ok, well maybe that's pretty good. But land sakes, folks, it's March 1999! If CINCOM goes down this place goes down hard. You cannot build the stuff we build here without a computerized BOM system. There is no manual mode. What if the CINCOM folks don't make the deadline? What if the installation doesn't go smoothly here. What if there are conversion issues in the databases? What if......?

But rest assured, we'll have our upgraded system in place Real Soon Now.

-- Franklin Journier (ready4y2k@yahoo.com), March 22, 1999.

FJ:

Sure you're asking the right person? My experience is that corporate IT is usually not responsible for plant systems, and definitely not responsible for manufacturing systems, such as robotics, etc. When I was working in corporate IT, I could guess at how other projects were going, and it would have sounded much like the answers you got.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 22, 1999.

Hoffmeister:

I don't have any problems with what you've said. Would you agree that the reporting poorly reflects the status? I'll be curious to compare the next SEC reporting to this information.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 22, 1999.

Forgot...

I have the biggest problem with IT managers wearing the y2k manager's hat at companies. The worse things are, the more they sugar coat the project reporting upstairs. The glare of a CEO while asking them why they didn't do this years ago only has to happen once.

-- PNG (png@gol.com), March 22, 1999.

PNG:

Yes, the article is somewhat muddled. It does try to give as many actual numbers as possible, which should be commended.

Actually, I was going to also question your priorities of Material-Manufacturing-Money, but couldn't find documentation I thought I had. Anyway, back about 10+ years ago, I was working in IT at a Fortune 100 company, and served on the Disaster Recovery Committee. We did some analysis on relative effects to the company given application/system failures, and it turned out that Money, or more precisely Cash Flow, had the greatest ability to bring the company to its knees in the shortest amount of time. Manufacturing problems can be smoothed to certain extent using excess inventory, and product already in the distribution chain. Realizing, of course, products probably differ greatly, depending on the type.

Not to imply by any means that manufacturing systems are not important. Just that, from what I remember, the systems such as Receivables, Billing, etc., had the ability to cripple the company in the shortest time.

-- Hoffmeister (hoff_meister@my-dejanews.com), March 22, 1999.

Actually the most depressing thing here is that I may not be able to get my Coke come 1/1/0. Boy, I am depressed now. But wait! I'll go out and buy Cokes at 80" each now and sell them at $2 come early 2000. They can't call it gouging because its not a necessity item. HA!

See ya later. I'm going down to the distributorship RIGHT this minute!

-- David (ConnectingDots@Information.Net), March 22, 1999.