Today's Wall St. Journal: Chemical and other factories plan to halt or scale back operations for Y2K...Can someone please post the text?

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Wall Street Journal, 12/20/99; Page B4: "Factories Plan to Halt or Scale Back Operations for Y2K; Chemical and Metal Firms are Taking Extra Precautions Despite Advance Tests."

Could someone please post the text?

Thanks,

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 20, 1999

Answers

ask and ye shall recieve (posted form WSJ, for dumbing down purposes only, no wagering allowed, this is just an exhibition):

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Factories Plan to Halt or Scale Back Operations for Y2K --- Chemical and Metal Firms Are Taking Extra Precautions Despite Advance Tests By Robert Guy Matthews 12/20/1999 The Wall Street Journal Page B4 (Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Call it the Y2K freeze.

Across the country, mills, chemical plants and factories will temporarily halt or scale back operations on New Year's Eve as a final safeguard against a possible Y2K computer glitch.

Although U.S. industrial companies have spent an estimated $5 billion testing and bringing their computers into compliance, mills and plants that routinely deal with explosive chemicals and super-hot metals can be some of the most dangerous places to be if something goes wrong.

The Y2K, or year 2000, computer problem arises when older computers read the "00" in the date Jan. 1, 2000, as 1900, and thus shut down or malfunction.

"We aren't worried," says D. John Armstrong, a spokesman for USX-U.S. Steel Group. "But we want to be sure." That's why U.S. Steel will suspend operations at its steelmaking facilities before midnight Dec. 31 and resume them sometime the next day. At Mon Valley Works, one of U.S. Steel's three iron-melting facilities in the country, the blast furnace and some other related machinery will be shut down eight hours before the end of 1999.

The blast furnace heats raw material to at least 2,680 degrees to make molten iron. Crews will carefully empty the hot metal out of the furnace and then inject steam into it to suspend the melting operation. The furnace must remain hot throughout, or it will be damaged. As a result, New Year's weekend crews will continue to fuel the furnaces to maintain a high temperature.

That particular maintenance process is done routinely about every six weeks, says Fred Harnack, the general manager at Mon Valley, which makes sheet steel for use in appliances, automobiles and construction. He says that the blast furnace, the most critical and potentially dangerous piece of machinery, will be brought back into service about four hours after midnight. In all, the company says that 3,500 tons of metal won't be produced because of the suspension of the blast furnace. But because this has all been planned, no orders to customers will go unfulfilled, Mr. Armstrong says.

In Japan, some major steelmakers, such as Nippon Steel Corp., Kobe Steel Ltd., and Kawasaki Steel Corp., have plans to halt several of their blast furnaces before midnight, with resumption expected the next day.

This New Year's Day poses a bigger burden on companies that operate mills and plants year-round, 24 hours a day. If they are shut off entirely, equipment worth millions of dollars could be permanently damaged. At International Paper Co., all the company's U.S. operations will "be in some form of operation," says Stephen Schaefgen, director of the company's Year-2000 Program. The company has studied each of its 31 mills around the world. In the U.S., "some lines will slow back. Others are not really going to alter operations at all," he says. As an extra precaution, additional staff will be on site.

Overseas, International Paper says, it will "lock down" its two huge mills in Kwidzyn, Poland, and Svetogorsk, Russia, because of the Y2K uncertainty in those countries. Jack Cox, spokesman for International Paper, said that it will take 24 hours for a "controlled shutdown" to be completed. But the mills won't be entirely shut down, because the boilers that heat the machines also provide some heat to each town.

Though production is halted periodically for maintenance, the shutdown of the European mills a day before New Year's will be a slow and tedious process costing the company production of 700 tons of paper each day. The company will turn off the machines in succession, throw a tarp over the equipment and place locks on the tarp to prevent workers from harming themselves. Mr. Cox says that he expects the mills to be out of production for several days.

Many industrial companies say their biggest concern lies with suppliers, such as power companies and water providers. A disruption in electricity or the water supply, which is often used to prevent equipment from overheating and starting fires, poses particular concerns. Mark Tomasch, spokesman for LTV Corp., said some of the company's plants have their own power supply in case of outages. Plants that don't will suspend operations just before midnight and resume New Year's Day.

Railroad companies, which supply materials and goods to the plants and mills, are taking their own precautions. Union Pacific Corp., Omaha, Neb., will stop trains New Year's Eve for varying periods while the company tests the signal systems in each of the three time zones in which it operates. As soon as the railroad verifies the systems are working properly, Union Pacific says, it will resume operations starting with commuter trains in Chicago, followed by Amtrak trains and then its own freight trains.

Norfolk Southern Corp., Norfolk, Va., plans to suspend all its freight trains before midnight on Dec. 31; early on New Year's Day, the company will begin to run selected trains and gradually restore normal operations by 7 a.m. Jan. 2.

In many cases, factories and plants are already shuttered anyway because of the holidays. The National Association of Manufacturers says a survey, which will be released this month, shows its members are confident and aren't stockpiling goods in anticipation of being out of service for an extended period of time.

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Dan Machalaba contributed to this article.

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Journal Link: Join an online discussion about the year-2000 problem in The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition at http://wsj.com

---

Geared Up for Y2K

Most manufacturers sampled say they're ready for Y2K

Y2K Sentiment % of Respondents Who Agree

96%-100% complete, including testing 94%

No impact at all on their companies 93%

On schedule 77%

No mission-critical systems will fail or malfunction 70%

No plans to add to inventories 59%

1%-5% of their non-mission-critical systems might have problems 53%

No formal contingency plan 47%

Still waiting for Y2K compliant versions of mission-critical software programs 7%

Behind schedule 6%

Expect a significant disruption to the economy 4%

Source: Survey conducted by Deutsche Bank Securities economist Edward Yardeni for the National Association of Manufacturers.

Copyright ) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.



-- theletterz (theletterz@yahoo.com), December 20, 1999.


theletterz,

Thanks a bunch for your help!

-- eve (123@4567.com), December 20, 1999.


Can you give us a url please?

-- (wanna@know.now), December 20, 1999.

Nice to see some companies acting responsibly...

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), December 20, 1999.

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