BPCS Support Conceptual Expectations 3

Out on loan to co-workers are my collection of White Papers on general
computing trade-offs & where the AS/436 fits in, the significance of RISC etc.
There was one, I think from the Gartner Group, where they evaluated the Total
Cost for Life, from Purchase, through Operational Support, to eventual has to
be replaced & how long is that Life, for Hardware & Software & Training
impacts on Corporate Costs & Support Staffing needed, to do essentially the
same job except via AS/400 Green Screen, AS/400 Client Server, UNIX, Pure PC
LAN, other Players in that Choice Marketplace.  

But I consider it to be a moving target, as technology choices march forwards,
whether the benefits of alternative new wonderful stuff are worth the costs &
burden of supporting them, and to even get a sense of what that total burden
is going to be before the decision is made to go down an irreversable path. 

When I say "non-technical upper management" I mean in the sense of being able
to evaluate the pros & cons of aquiring some type of technology that we do not
have.  Most all our managers use Green Screens & PCs & interfaces & the BPCS
reports, both vanilla & modified, such as from Query/400.

How can I, with my MIS Mgr hat, advise my non-technical upper management,
whether this technology or that technology is wise for the corporation, when
all they see is the sticker purchase price, and a marketing brochure, while I
have only a minimal conceptual image of what the operational burden is going
to be?

I am not anti-technology on general principles, rather more interested in the
business case to justify what are the benefits of this new toy vs. that one.

There is technology that I am periodically pushing, like the idea of moving
our 2 million paper blue prints to CD-Rom or the AS/400 version of on-line
video library.

Depending on the nature of someone's job, it can be more productive for them
to have a PC, because data downloaded from AS/400 goes through a PC
application that is more meaningful to their responsibilities.  This is
especially true for our Accounting & Quality Control, but it may vary per
company which functions management chooses to have on PC or other package
outside of BPCS.  

IMO, when a person's input is pretty much heads down keying like the 500
series jobs, a Green Screen interface makes more sense than GUI, but if the
data is in a form that could be scanned in automatically, there is a need to
step outside the box of BPCS & hardware, and re-think such infrastructure
topics as data collection, fax-input run thru EDI interfaces, etc.  IMO, at
Central we just have too much transcription at Central, and that issue
overshadows whether Green Screen or GUI is more productive by application.

But I thank you for your insight that helps move my mind through the mine
field of these evolving trade-offs.

Al Macintyre
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