BPCS Support Conceptual Expectations 1

In this thread I want to share a perspective on how we came to BPCS 405 CD in
the first place and where SSA future moves are somewhat at odds with where we
currently go in the future and what our choices are for dealing with that &
what some of the generic challenges are for which I am never satisfied with
the working solutions - I expect that other people who have gone through
similar soul searching will point out some misconceptions I may be laboring
under & I hope I am raising questions that are good discussion topics for this
list.

My interests & concerns are a mixture of Midrange trends & where BPCS fits
into that & where we fit into the changing choices.

I am glad that my employer, Central Industries of Indiana, ultimately reached
a consensus that agreed with my analysis, that our optimal Y2K solution to a
10 year old version of BPCS/36 was migration to BPCS 405 CD.  I came to that
conclusion after 2 years studying 1,000 packages from SSA competition, and my
then 12 years experience as a Central employee intimately familiar with
requirements leading to the modifications I had done to BPCS/36 & MAPICS I
before it.

If we stick with SSA standard alternatives, BPCS 405 CD is the last
alternative that is both Green Screen and Y2K compliant.  Based on our BPCS/36
experience, it is generally believed by all the BPCS old timers at Central
that there will come a time that SSA will drop support for BPCS 405 CD, just
like they did not support BPCS/36 forever.

SSA Marketing of the 1980's slyly waited until we had paid for BPCS/36 then
tried to sell us BPCS/400 at full price, which royally alienated my management
for too long - we would have been much better off had we known we could haggle
for some middle ground, then started our BPCS life on AS/400 which was
announced by IBM a few months after we decided to convert from MAPICS I to
BPCS.  

BPCS/36 support was good for a few years, then it seemed like SSA's staff only
knew BPCS/38 or BPCS/400, then BPCS/36 support went away.  I am betting that
BPCS 405 CD support will lose favor at SSA around year 2001 or 2002, then by
2005 it will be history, because SSA will be trying to get everyone to migrate
to V8, and will not be wanting to be supporting the Green Screen hold-outs
when the future is pure Client/Server.

In addition to the question of why should an upgrade cost us so much in time &
effort to go from one to the next, is the question of how often we need to go
through this ordeal.  How long is it between one SSA release V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7
and the next?  About 2 years?  How long is is after one SSA release &
withdrawal of support for an earlier one?  About 1 year?  What is the rate or
life span at which new versions appear, get the bugs worked out, then their
customers get dragged kicking & screaming into the next version?  Well we
scream - some other customers might be hollaring with joy.

New versions of IBM OS/400 come out more rapidly than SSA's - every 6 months,
but the upgrade to next V#R# is comparatively painless - we get the benefits
without a conversion ordeal.  The PC world is especially bad at this idea that
just because you have our product, you got to pay us bucks & go through a
nightmare periodically to get our latest version, and often with no obvious
benefits other than not losing stuff we need to hang on to.

Is it a fair estimate that for the 3rd party outfits that support ancient
versions of BPCS, even though there are 3rd party solutions to get BPCS/36 to
Y2K compliance, there is no long term profit in supporting anything prior to
the earliest AS/400 version?  Can we anticipate that after SSA cuts-off
support for any version, it will be 10-20 years before 3rd party support for
that version goes away?

IMHO, BPCS 405 CD can probably serve Central another 10 years but there will
be pressure to move in other directions & I need to periodically re-think my
reccommendations as the trade-offs evolve.  Due to the size of the company &
due to my vision of higher staff support needed for C/S than green screen out
of proportion with the increased benefits (examples cited later in this
posting), I am inclined to believe that when that next move comes, we would be
best served by sticking with green screen support from 3rd party (not SSA) or
leaving BPCS for a package that is not leaving the Green Screen World.

My comfort levels may be influencing this view.  I started with punched cards
& machine language in the early 1960's & have moved up the ladder of IBM S/3
something, using some version of RPG since the late 1960's and I am now aged
in my mid 50's.  I like the diversity of programming, analysis, operations,
doing a bit of everything, that may not be practical with a work load that
requires multiple specialized MIS persons.

In theory, I believe that more powerful computer technology should mean that
corporate investment in more brain power would translate into better able to
compete for more business and higher profits supported by consistent staffing
levels earning higher salaries.  But that does not always seem to be the norm.
Getting someone a fancier computer hardware software should mean that they can
get more done with less effort, but in the PC world especially there seems to
be this notion that people need the latest toys with no correlation to
business productivity benefits.

So there are these issues of expectations - am I making reasonable bets or
predictions about how long we can get what we see as value before the rest of
the world passes us by.  I recall a conversation I had with my former boss, in
which I was trying to persuade him that it would be to our benefit from the
perspective of a more productive computer system for everyone if we got some
specific add-on tools & Don told me that some of our competitors do not even
have a computer & the fact that we have one is why we make a point in our
brochure of saying that we are using BPCS on an IBM S/36 to manage all our
manufacturing system needs from this to that examples.  Basically it gives us
a competitive edge to mention what MRP does for us.  So Don's point was that I
should be happy to have a job here - forget about my notion of spending any
money to increase return on computer investment.

This was in the early 1990's & I just did not believe him that any
manufacturer in this day & age would not be doing something similar to us -
different platform perhaps, different mix of applications.  I was careful not
to say something stupid to his face that I thought he was speaking some absurd
science fiction ... but then a couple years later I was chatting with a new
hire in the production & inventory area & he had come from a manufacturer
about the same size as us, which did not use a computer other than the front
office accounting stuff - all their routings & BOM & etc. were paper file
cabinets & photo copy machines - no labor reporting, hopeless with inventory
accuracy, no cost tracking, schedule on a huge black board bigger than a
normal room, covered with post-it notes of changed customer requirements not
yet reworked into the official plan.

We "stole" some business from Singapore, because we beat them out on Quality &
other issues having nothing to do with what computer system we use & I am
wondering what kinds of systems they use in these low priced labor countries
we are competing with - do they use the cheaper electronics they sell us,
within their own manufacturing operations, with theories that parallel their
own?  Or was Don correct that just being able to do MRP is all the competitive
edge we need?

Al Macintyre
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