Many companies are concerned by the need to become Millennium compliant NOW, specifically when it comes to planning and forecasting on BPCS. Are you concerned? F.Hoffmann - La Roche were and they found an enterprise-ready solution.!

In 1996, with the long term strategy of moving dozens of BPCS installations to SAP around the globe, La Roche recognised the difficulty involved in completely migrating such a large number of sites before experiencing the first wave of year 2000 problems. An appropriate weekend test, moving the system date step-by-step into the year 2000, projected a deadline of early 1998 for corrective action (forecasts and financials were the first areas to be affected). This deadline would have been impossible to achieve.

After evaluating the variety of Y2K solutions available during Autumn 1996, the decision was made to implement a temporary fix to gain more time. There was a clear preference for MS4 in terms of functionality, costs and effort. Roche Bladel, an affiliate in the Netherlands, who had the usual spread of financial, logistics, and manufacturing modules was chosen as the MS4 pilot site.

During a period of four months, with major emphasis on very thorough testing and modifications, the Roche Bladel BPCS system was migrated using MS4 and re-introduced into production. This MS4/BPCS System has been running live since mid-1998 without any problems.