Re: Y2K v.s. CHGJOB Gotcha?

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

Thanks from Al Macintyre

When we did our Y2K testing for 405 CD just over a year ago, we had BPCS/36 
live on the same hardware, so mucking with system date was not a smart move - 
our testing was best that we could manage at that reality, but now that we 
are killing BPCS/36 (we did not migrate our history & users hot keyed into 
the old reality to get at history of prior to transition), I am now wondering 
if other testing is prudent, that was not doable during the original 
conversion.

>  From:    abney@iquest.net (Lisa Abney)
>  
>  Al ...
>  
>  Do you use QMS or LMS?  That module (apparently written by a third party 
and 
> incorporated into BPCS) is the one place we found in our Y2K testing of 
4.0.5 
> (not CD) that uses a lot of system dates, which were not caught in our 
> testing using CHGJOB.  

No - we do not use QMS or LMS, yet --- many modules that we do not use are 
open to inspection & discussion whether this is a BPCS feature that we might 
want to use in the future.  I rather doubt that we might use them any time 
soon --- most of our quality problems are errors in shuffling papers & 
transcription during shipping, where we send the right stuff to a customer, 
but the shipper selects the wrong lines in ORD570, or keys in the wrong 
quantity.

> Also, did your dates include 2/29/00 and 3/1/00?  

Well, I gave the testers a list of about 20 "magic" dates with explanations 
why they were at Y2K risk & 2/29/00 was one ranked as key important measure, 
but we left it up to people in each application to do their own testing, 
since they were familiar with the application, and best qualified to tell if 
doing the same stuff in different dates should give the same results or not & 
able to see if the differences were valid.  Overall my co-workers did a whole 
lot more testing than I expected they would.

> Other than that, your testing strategy sounds very similar to ours (which, 
> just a few weeks ago, past the scrutiny of our very picky outside 
auditors!).

another interesting issue - as far as I know, our auditors were not invited 
to check on our Y2K conversion directly - we use them primarily to check our 
physical inventory & we used physical inventories at all facilities within a 
month after going live on BPCS 405 CD as a check on how we were doing --- a 
good percentage of accuracy is the traditional management measure that all is 
right in our world.

Of course, I have no way of knowing if our auditors have any special 
expertise with Y2K --- one of my suggestions, that did not get heeded, had 
been to get the Y2K certification check list from ITAA.ORG, so we don't 
overlook anything critical in the embedded chip area, which has got to be a 
larger risk than IT at any manufacturer.  I am reassured that many PCs are 
getting Y2K upgrades, our phone system got an overhaul & a broad spectrum of 
obvious embedded electronics are being addressed.  Also, most of our factory 
equipment is so old it pre-dates the Y2K electronics risk.

Al Macintyre
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