Activity # 3. Mr. Ken Smith a Senior MIS Manager
For me the time MIS department was formed. Again that was really a system to put on computer what we did on paper. So it was replacng the classic card based warehouse stock system. We didn’t really start programming ourselves until 1985. We made improvements by adding modules to purchasing disctribution which are all in-house produced but the major advance in the adoption of IT to support the business objectives overall were the curent project that was lauched in May 1987.
I think that has some bearing beacause there are only 3 chemical plants in Company Y, the others are pharamaceutical plants, and there is a big difference in the logistical operations of those places. Pharamaceutical are much easier in terms of systems, it’s more like engineering you have a bit of material and you know you’ve always got the right parts for the right component.
We have IBM manfraimes, IBM minis, IBM terminals, we have discount agreements with IBM. Soi anything to do with IBM is safe not very visionary but safe.
We know the programs that we’ve had to alter some to make them work in our environment so when we get release update we can go back and modify them and write them again. I think with all packaged software they have a life-cycle and you will in time modify more and more and there will come a point in time when maintenance of that software is not viable and you will cut it off. Some companies do that. Mind that it needs fairly competent department to do that. And we could do that! Since we’ve got 9 people, including me, 4 in development, 3 in operations and I, who is in support.
We had to replace some programs that did’t work at all, we had to replace programs that were just so inefficient that they just locked the processor stone dead. So we did have to use our technical skills. I’m lucky, I’ve got a very skilled department and very stable department. There’s no staff turnover here, no one’s ever left here. No-one’s every left yet.
We took a package and presumed the package would do the job. So we hav a very, very broad outline requirement but we didn’t do it in the correct amount of detail. It wasn’t done by MIS at all it was done by user and they didn’t do any systems analysis.
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