Many companies that have addressed the problem are in the assessment phase, which is examining all systems and trying to determine how many lines of code will be affected.įar fewer companies are in the planning stage, in which they determine what applications to rewrite and which to replace. "It's enough to give people sleepless nights," he added.įortunately, food retailers are beginning to wake up.
Everybody's afraid of being the first one to bring up the fact that it might cost $10 million" to bring all applications into compliance, said Pat Cox, Year 2000 project manager, Spartan Stores, Grand Rapids, Mich. "The scary part about it is the dollars involved. Or, as many retailers told SN, companies may not be fiscally or mentally prepared to confront the cost issue. "If there are companies out there not dealing with this, they must be financially independent or don't care if their systems run or not," said Al van Luvender, vice president, management information systems at Riser Foods, Bedford Heights, Ohio. 1, 2000.Įxperts say the steps necessary to overcome the problem will consume massive resources in time, people and dollars, on the order of $300 billion to $600 billion worldwide, according to the Gartner Group, Stamford, Conn.Īdding insult to injury, the conversion to Year 2000-compliant systems has no tangible return on investment and, unlike most projects, the deadline for completion is not negotiable. The bad news is most systems, left to operate with file structures containing only two digits to represent a given year, will malfunction when computer clocks flip to Jan. Information systems executives have found themselves in the unenviable role of the messenger with unpleasant news: "Year 2000" is coming and it's not time to celebrate.
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