Abstract
 Customer Service will be affected by the Year 2000  computer problem.  Products and services that rely on non-compliant equipment or suppliers will not be delivered as customers expect.  Mortgage payments may look like debits, utility services may be interrupted, and some core business processes may shut down.  Managers in all types of organizations are working to achieve Year 2000 compliance.  Are quality improvement professionals more involved than other workers in these efforts?
 Quality improvement professionals have special skills for doing this work.  They can schedule and monitor the replacement or renovation of non-compliant equipment.  They can work to redesign business processes using only compliant equipment.  Thy are accustomed to working with suppliers.  If a firm must limit its product and service offerings because of the Year 2000 problem, quality improvement professionals can help to determine which products and services are most important to customers.
 This paper describes an investigation of the applicability of quality principles to the Year 2000 problem.  The study asked quality professionals about their involvement in the work to cope with the Year 2000 problem.  There were two objectives: 1) to sensitize people to the issues involved; and 2) to acquire information regarding the effect that the Year 2000 problem has on an organization from a quality perspective.

Background
         The use of two digits to indicate the year made sense in light of the fact that in the early days of computers, storage space was a costly and limited resource.  With the quantum leaps in storage media technology, this is no longer a consideration.  For example, in 1983 an IBM PC was shipped with a 64 kilobyte hard drive.  Today, it is normal for IBM-compatible computers to be shipped with 2 gigabyte hard drives.
 Many software applications use time-sensitive calculations.  Mortgage payments, interest calculations, insurance policy due dates, funds transfers, lease records, property sales, real estate transactions, flight schedules and birth records are just a few examples of the instances in our daily lives where the date is important.  The problem is not confined just to software.  Hardware designed for metering, scheduling and monitoring often uses embedded chips that contain date and time information.  Embedded chips in production equipment may cause manufacturing processes to shut down at the change in century.   The Kraft Corporation has already felt the effects of the Year 2000 problem. Its warehouse destroyed several million dollars worth of food because the expiration date was after January 1, 2000.  Because of the two-digit encoding of the dates, the warehouse processed the shipments as expired and destroyed them.  The Year 2000 problem has implications for all types of organizations and their customers.
 
        Once a company has become aware of the problem and identified the systems that are affected, testing, remediation, and contingency planning follow.  Remediation is the act of fixing and/or replacing those systems that are affected by the Year 2000 problem.  Contingency planning answers the “what if” questions.  If a failure occurs, how will the concerns of customers, suppliers, employees and shareholders be met?
The purpose of remediation is the prevention of production and service disruptions.  Service disruptions reduce the level of customer service.  Therefore, a remediation plan is essentially a customer service plan.  Production stoppages translate into lost sales and lost market share.  A key element of customer service is service and product quality.  Quality professionals have the responsibility to ensure that products are of the quality defined by the customer.  They are therefore in a unique position to assist in the remediation of the Year 2000 problem.  The Quality Assurance Manager can, for example, assist in the determination of acceptable levels of quality degradation in the event of non-compliance.  Quality professionals can assist in determining the priorities for remediation based on customer specifications, safety regulations and industry standards.  They are also in a position to help determine the mix of products and services acceptable to customers in a failure situation.

Study Methodology
This study had two objectives: 1) to sensitize people to the issues involved; and 2) to acquire information regarding the effect that the Year 2000 problem was having on organizations from a quality perspective.  The population for this study was Quality professionals, defined as those who are members of the Washington, DC, Capital Area chapter of the American Society for Quality.  We believe that members of this organization are likely to be involved in any efforts to address the Year 2000 issue, if quality professionals are involved at all.  A questionnaire was developed and pre-tested.  One thousand copies of the revised questionnaire were sent out with the chapter newsletter.  It was also posted on the American Society for Quality web site bulletin board, which is a nationwide resource, for three months.
The questionnaire was developed based on the Year 2000 literature, specifically the literature related to the process for achieving compliance and the consequences of non-compliance.  Demographic questions were asked in order to categorize respondents by company size (number of employees), type of organization, and the position of the individual respondent.  This last question was asked in order to determine whether the individual who prepared the questionnaire was qualified to answer it.  The remaining questions were designed to ascertain the level of awareness, remediation, testing and contingency planning that had been carried out within the responding companies.  In addition, we asked whether suppliers were involved and whether contracts have been revised to address Year 2000 compliance issues.  Two open-ended questions were asked that allowed the respondents to describe their perceptions of how the lack of Year 2000 compliance would affect their customers and what policies and procedures have been put in place to address the possible negative affects of this problem on customers.

Results
 Of the 1000 questionnaires sent out, twenty-one were returned.  One was not useable.  Hence, the response rate was 2 percent.  Of the twenty respondents, seven (or 35%) were consultants.  This is to be expected, given the nature of the economy in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.  Table 1 provides a profile of respondents.
Table 1: Respondent Profile: Industries

Industry Number Percent
Other (Consulting) 7 35.0
Manufacturing 5 25.0
Government 3 15.0
Education 2 10.0
Not-for-Profit 2 10.0
Financial Services 1   5.0
Total 20   100.0
 
 We also asked the respondents about their responsibilities regarding quality in their companies.  This question was designed to ascertain whether the particular respondent was qualified to answer questions regarding his or her company’s quality initiatives vis-à-vis Y2K.  Thirty-five percent of the respondents were middle managers for whom quality was part of their jobs.  Four respondents were executives with sole responsibility for company-wide quality improvement initiatives.   Table 2 provides further information regarding the positions of the respondents within their companies.

Table 2: Job Responsibilities of Respondents

Position Number
Middle Manager, quality part of job 7
Executive, with sole responsibility for company-wide quality improvement initiatives
4
Other (engineer, analyst) 4
Middle Manager, with sole responsibility for quality improvement within a department or division
2
Owner/Partner, sets company policy 2
Executive, quality part of job 1
 
 

As can be ascertained from Table 2, these respondents can be said to have experience and responsibilities sufficient to discuss the quality initiatives in their companies.
  The key issue of this survey was the association of what is often perceived to be simply a technical or computer issue with quality improvement activities.  We asked a series of questions designed to determine whether quality is important to the company and whether the respondents believed that Y2K is a quality issue.  We also wanted to know whether the company had been working on Y2K.  A series of questions were therefore asked regarding the company’s plans for amelioration of this problem.  Table 3 provides the perceptions of the respondents regarding Y2K as a Quality issue.  In general the respondents believe that Y2K is important to their companies and something that quality professionals should be involved in.  The majority (thirteen respondents) believed that quality professionals have special skills to deal with the Y2K issue.   Respondents listed such things as problem solving tools and techniques, process improvement tools and techniques, and the ability to implement solutions.   It is interesting to note that the two respondents who said that the Year 2000 Problem is not important to their companies were the two Owner/Partners.  This is a significant finding in the sense that one would think that an Owner would pay particular attention to any event that has the potential to put him or her out of business.

Table 3: Year 2000 Problem as a Quality Issue
 

Question
Yes
No Don’t Know
Is the Year 2000 Problem important to your company? 18 2
My company has a group of people whose major responsibility is currently to solve this problem?
16
4
Is the Year 2000 Problem a quality-related issue? 15 5
Do you think that Y2K is an issue that quality people should be involved in?
17
3
Do process improvement people have special skills that would help in solving the Year 2000 Problem?
13
4
3

Another objective of the survey was to collect information regarding where these companies are in their knowledge of the Year 2000 Problem and the plans they have in place to fix it in their companies.  We also wanted to know what these companies were doing relative to their suppliers.  And, of course, we asked each respondent if his or her company was year 2000 compliant.  It is interesting to note that four of the twenty respondents did not know whether their companies were compliant.  This might indicate that the Quality people are not involved in decision-making.  In addition, it might indicate that the company is not doing a very good job of publicizing its status to its employees.  The data also suggest that while Quality personnel are involved at the tactical level in terms of knowing about contingency plans and supplier compliance, they do not have knowledge of changes in strategic plans to reflect concerns about the Year 2000 Problem.  In most cases, companies are sending questionnaires to their suppliers asking them to certify that their systems are Y2K compliant.  It is also

Table 4: Company Y2K Compliance Plans
 

Question
Yes
No Don’t Know
Does your company have a formal plan for becoming Year 2000 compliant?
16
3
1
Does your company have contingency plans in case there are problems becoming Year 2000 compliant on schedule?
10
7
3
Is the company working with suppliers to ensure that their systems are Year 2000 compliant?
14
2
4
Is your company modifying its strategic plan to deal with opportunities or dangers associated with the Year 2000 Problem?
4
7
9
Has your company altered its legal contracts to require that suppliers be Year 2000 compliant?
7
3
10
Is your company Year 2000 compliant? 9 7 4

interesting to note that while respondents know that their companies are working with suppliers, they are, in general, not aware of whether legal contracts have been amended to reflect concerns about Year 2000 compliance.  Table 4 summarizes the respondents’ knowledge of Y2K and their companies’ plans.
Limitations
   The key limitation to the generalizability of this study is the low response rate.  Even though 1000 questionnaires were sent out, we cannot even generalize to the capital area ASQ chapter, certainly not to all quality professionals.  The sample, which consisted of quality professionals in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, may not reflect the views of quality professionals nationally.  Further, the academic literature is almost silent regarding the Year 2000 issue.  Given the perceived short-term nature of the phenomenon, this does not come as a surprise.  It is still, even among academics, viewed as a technical issue without academic interest.
Conclusions
    While it is difficult to generalize from a sample of only 20 respondents, we can say that these respondents perceive the Year 2000 computer crisis as a quality issue.  Both the quantitative and qualitative responses to this question bear this out.  These respondents also believe that quality and process improvement professionals have special skills to help resolve the issue.  They listed skills such as the Quality Improvement tools (fishbone diagrams, etc.), problem solving skills, process improvement skills, and the ability to dissect a process and suggest improvements and solutions.  It appears that even though some of these respondents characterized themselves as executives, as a group they are probably not involved in strategic planning.  However, they all appeared to be aware of the impact of Y2K on their companies and what is being done to fix it.
    This study sought not only to ascertain the role of quality professionals in solving the Year 2000 Problem, but also to sensitize this particular community about the issue.  While they may not be directly involved in strategic planning for their companies, they are aware of the issue and its impact upon their companies.  Further, most respondents are aware of their companies’ compliance status and their plans for becoming compliant.  An interesting follow-up study would be to ask quality professionals what issues arise after January 1, 2000.

 References
1.  Jones, Capers, The Year 2000 Software Problem - Quantifying the Costs and Assessing the Consequences, Addison-Wesley , New York, N.Y. 1998.

2.  Samuelson, Robert J., Computer Doomsday, The Washington Post, May 6, 1998.

3.  Year 2000 Information Center, web site: http://www.year2000.com
4.  Y2K Investor, web site: http://www.y2kinvestor.com
5.  Umpleby, Stuart A., “Y2K: An ‘autopsy’ of Modern Society?”, Science, vol. 284, May 21,  1999, pp. 1273-74.

6.  U.S. Senate, Investigating the Impact of the year 2000 Problem.  February 1999 (www.senate.gov/~y2k).

7.  Webster, Bruce, The Estimated Impact of the Year 2000 Problem in the United States - A Survey of the Membership of the Washington, DC Year 2000 Group, Spring 1999 (http://www.wdcyzk.org/survey/survey99).