Small companies throughout Pennsylvania are ready for the day when their machines will have to shift from the 1900s to the 21st century, thanks to Penn State's statewide technical outreach network, the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PENNTAP).
Ralph Caretti, PENNTAP senior technical specialist, has been supplying Y2K readiness assistance, free of charge, to 120 companies in 34 counties, including testing computer hardware and software, installing software patches and preparing customized reports of specific compliance recommendations.
According to a recent CAP Gemini survey reported by Business Week magazine, 94 percent of companies in the United States will have most mission-critical system Y2K-compliant by midnight on Dec. 31.
Rodney Kelley is director of information services at Uni-marts Inc. headquarters in State College. He said he started getting the convenience food store chain ready for Y2K back in 1997. Still when Caretti came in to check, he brought a number of additional issues to Kelley's attention.
"None were critical problems, but someone had to ascertain the fact that the remaining issues weren't critical," Kelley said. "We are a public company and, as a result, need to be sure that we will not have any significant disruptions to our business. Thanks to Ralph, we are now."
Kimberly Bauer, quality systems manager at Contact Technologies Inc., an electrical contact manufacturer in St. Mary's, had never worked with a PENNTAP technical service specialist before. Her firm heard about the assistance from the area's Industrial Research Center.
"It would have cost us approximately $1,500 to have our custom programmer review all of our systems," Bauer said. "Ralph's help was free and he had more access to information about our commercial software than our programmer. He knew which versions are complaint and which ones are not. The time savings were tremendous."
Jack Gido, PENNTAP director, said in evaluation surveys clients have reported economic benefits of $630,000 and 27 jobs saved as a direct result of PENNTAP year 2000 assessments. Clients also reported 99 percent satisfaction with the service.
For more information about getting Y2K ready, call (877) 722-5669 or go to http://www.pa2k.org/. For the full story, go to http://www.psu.edu/ur/NEWS/.
PENNTAP is a federal/state/university partnership for economic development, serving Pennsylvania since 1965.