BHA Computers

CONRADS Casino

Saturday May 25th 1994

FINAL DRAFT

This evening we have as our guest speaker a man who is based in the United Kingdom after having lived in Australia for some ten years.

He recently approached BHA with a proposal for increasing the profile and installations of BHA products in the United Kingdom, especially in his native country of Ireland. I have not known Paddy for very long however, we are getting to know each other very well as we go through the negotiation stage of establishing his enterprise. Not only does he have extensive knowledge and experience in materials handling and computer modelling especially of maintenance prediction, he has also been on several committees developing standards for the use and streamlining of bar coding procedures. Apart from that he has a great sense of humour. For that reason I decided to give you the chance of meeting him and hearing what he is up to in other parts of the world. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please welcome Mr Paddy McDermot.

Thank you very much ................, everything you said about me in your introduction is true, and I should know, I wrote it. And thank you too for inviting me to speak tonight at your dinner this evening. I'll have to apologise for the voice, I seem to be a little horse this evening. Maybe I'm from Shetland. Let me start by saying that I have seen the people you have had as after dinner speakers in previous years and I am afraid I can't pass myself off as a great actor, gifted dancer or talented sportsman. However, I will speak to you in my own style on the moves to establish BHA computers in the United Kingdom, which is a strange name since it is really a Queendom. As you may have picked, I am Irish, from Ireland. In the county Cork, is a little town called Wedlock, I was born just outside of there. No, really I was born in a little town called Flagton, about 50 miles North of Dublin. I moved to London in my teens which is where I got involved with computers. Initially, it was playing games, then writing games and computer software and computer programs in general.

As .............. mentioned, my speciality these days is computer modelling. I've done a fair bit of work on weather models, financial models and of course, the thing that many of you are interested in, maintenance schedules. Nowadays, I am happy to sell software rather than develop it. I got tired of having bad skin from living exclusively on pizza in a darkened badly-lit room. I spent just over ten years here in Australia working with your CSIRO in the climate research department. About three years ago I decided to go back to the UK because it is just too quiet here. I can't sleep without the background fear of explosions and knee-cappings.

Ireland is a beautiful place and the sooner we see and end to the troubles, the better as far as I am concerned. It has gotten really bad, one knight I was walking down the street and a couple of guys dragged me into a lane, they had me up against a wall and wanted to know whether I was catholic or Protestant. I didn't know what religion they were so I though quickly and said "Jewish". They said "We must be the luckiest Arabs in Belfast tonight. During this visit I have been back in Australia for a couple of weeks having what can only be described as frank and meaningful talks with GENERAL MANAGER??? over the final arrangements and agreements for setting up the office in the UK.

I notice that these days you have a bit of regular Irish influence on your TV with that guy on Sunday nights...Jimeoin. While I can guarantee that not everyone in Ireland is like him, I would have to state categorically that by Australian standards, at least 75% of people would be certifiable.

Of course, telling you all this doesn't enhance my credibility when I am planning to be taken seriously for at least part of my speech and talk. I suppose I should get down to business so I can finish up and we can get down to some serious Guiness drinking. Speaking of which...(drink some Guiness)...aah, nectar of the Gods and Goddesses.

I am going to start by telling you about some of the latest developments in computer technology in the materials handling domain and area. It would be a little ridiculous to start at the very beginning, despite the fact that Julie Andrews thinks it's a very good place to start. To do that I would have to go back to the times when there was no such thing as stock and inventory control management. When the notion of being able to plan maintenance was absolutely beyond comprehension. You don't have to go back before the second world war and the early 1940's to see a trend to responsibility for stock on hand instead of seeing it as an unlimited resource as had been in previous years. Excluding the years of the great depression of course.

It was due the vast quantities and wide variety of items being transfered across the country and around the world by the defence forces during the war that a streamlined method of accounting for and tracking inventory items was refined from the crude predecessors that were in place. Now, you have to try to picture how it was all managed in those days with no computers, communications far more primitive than exist today - no mobile phones or fax sending machines. I certainly have difficulty conceiving how things were done on the big massive scale that they were. No doubt in fifty or so years they will be looking back at us in the nineteen nineties and wonder how we did without whatever is the flavour of the month in the future. You may be wondering how all this relates to BHA computers and MMS. Frankly, so am I, so I better get to the point.

You are all here because MMS provides comprehensive solutions to the unique problems associates with materials, maintenance and financial needs of industry and Government organisations. The suite of programs has been designed to take advantage of the latest technological advances in fourth generation language relational database applications. Back in the days of flat databases, none of what MMS provides would have been possible without some sort of extensive human intervention and analysis of the results provided by the computer. MMS solves this problem and it is the main reason I want to establish it as a major player in the UK market. The wide range of heavy industry in the United Kingdom and Europe in general makes the region ripe for a software solution such as MMS. To be sure, we have other programs of a similar nature, but of course, none of them come close to the power and versatility of MMS.

In Ireland in particular we have a unique opportunity to revolutionise and industry an industry that has resisted all efforts to bring it into the 19th century. I'm talking specifically about coal mining. Could you just raise your hands if you are in the mining sector? Could you raise your hands if you aren't in the mining sector. Could you raise your hands if you have no idea what sector you are in!! You see, in the UK, the unions perceive computers and particularly software such as MMS as a threat to the position of many of their employees in various operations around the country. In a way this can be said to be accurate, however, I am sure you would all agree that the substantial good benefits of computerised materials and maintenance procedures far outweighs the adversely bad effects. One of my reasons for being here is to formulate a marketing strategy aimed directly at union leaders in the United Kingdom. We need to educate them to the advantages that can be brought about by automating parts of their domain while still maintaining their support base from within the industry.

Uh Oh, I can see I am getting a little serious here, so I better tell you wee story to lighten the mood. As I mentioned, I lived here for a while, I think that travelling is in my blood. My great grandfather was an explorer in the early white settlement of parts of the United States. He heading west with a French Man and an Englishman. To be honest, I don't know how he put up with the smell. As they were heading through the badlands of the Dakotas they were captured by a band of savage indians. They had been held captive for some time, the indians were doing all there war dances and stuff. One night they came for the Englishman and said. "Good pale skin, perfect for lamp shade." They took him away, killed him, skinned him and turned him into an exquisite lampshade. The next night they came for the Frenchman. "Good soft skin, make very nice water bag." They took him away, killed him, skinned him and before you knew it he was the loveliest water bag you have ever seen. The next night they came for Great Grand Pappy Paddy. They looked at him, they prodded him then they said "Good tough skin, ideal for canoe". He grabbed the knife out of their hands and said "You'll be no making a canoe out of me!!!".

Hey, .............. I'm beginning to think they are going to appreciate the jokes more than the serious stuff you asked me to talk about.

OK, not much longer to go. Whether it be unions or government I have to deal with, there is usually a formidable amount of red tape and bureaucratic hurdles to jump over before anything is finalised. As you would know, sometimes these negotiations, demonstrations and evaluations can take up to a couple of years before a potential client is satisfied that the product serves their needs. In a way, the technology has become its own enemy. These days, it is impossible to make a decision without conducting time and resource consuming tests. Perhaps this is a fact of living in the late twentieth century with all the gee whizz things you can buy to make life easier.

Modern technology certainly is incredible, but it can lead to some interesting situations. A leading lawyer back home was at a client's house indulging in a little, shall we call it, "horizontal folk dancing". Unexpectedly her husband suddenly drove into the driveway. Since they were naked, it would have looked a little strange to be discussing a case, especially divorce. This guy must have watched a few movies, because he made all the right moves, he grabbed all his gear and quick as a flash hid in the cupboard. It looked like he was going to get away with it until, you guessed it, his mobile phone started ringing. Now this guy was a good lawyer. When the door was flung open he said "It's for you!" It didn't work.

None the less, the advances that have been made to get us to where we are today can be described as nothing less than real good. I think if we take the bar code for example, we can see how something simple like ink on paper in a certain pattern can change the way we do business. I know what you are thinking, that writing is no more than ink on paper, but I am talking more in the mechanical sense. The bar code is close to the most simple form of coding you can find. It is based on a binary pattern. As the name Binary implies, in this situation there are two possibilities likely. With bar codes it is the combination of black lines and white lines, but binary also includes ones and zeros, ons and offs, ups and downs, ins and outs, ins and outs, ins and outs. Sorry I was getting a little carried away there.

I suppose you have all seen the Irish sex manual. Believe it or not it is only three pages long. On the first page it says "IN", on the second page it says "OUT" on the third page it says "repeat if necessary".

I'm not here tonight to talk about bar coding, but I have been fairly instrumental in representing the UK in the European Economic Community's adoption of a standard that will cross the international boundaries of a single economic zone and the complications that are inherent in any sort of undertaking on a similar scale. But before I move on to the next part of the speech let me just explain a little about the advances in the technology that we are dealing with in Europe and the way it could relate to you and your company. As most of you would already be aware, everything is bar coded today to make stock identification, control and handling more efficient and more cost effectively cheap.

Have you looked around at the extent to which this technology has advanced forward? I have a wee hire car and on the windscreen it has a bar code, they could call it a car code. The Australian Maritime Museum in Sydney has every one of its twenty five thousand pieces bar coded. The advantages of a system in this sort of environment are obvious. Here's one that isn't so obvious and its one that not many people believe, but in the United States, where they are experimenting with genetically breeding chickens, each chicken has a bar coded tag attached to it's leg as soon as it hatches so that they can each be individually monitored as they grow, and thus their entire history is able to be recorded. Once again, the analysis possibilities are endless and it is being seen to have incredible benefits for society in general. Although what they could be I have no idea. There is even one company genetically altering chickens so that they have three legs. They are running a luckily chicken leg competition along the lines of the lucky one pound note. A local radio station reads a number every morning and if you catch the chicken with that number attached to it's leg during the day, you can claim the prize. Have you ever tried to catch a chicken with three legs?

Obviously that isn't true, but the story about the tags on the chickens legs is. In any predisposed conflict arising from adversely perceived conditions condusively following externalised fundamental activities based on inherently diversified notions linking management complexities indirectly or otherwise to problematically identified coherent policies especially undertaken in the context of increased modality situations that can ultimately predict protracted instances requiring where there is emphasis placed on immediate intervention requiring the understanding of previously presented situations. Basically, what I'm saying is that if you've seen it all before, why bother trying to understand it. With BHA's co-operation we have set up a demonstration site in Northern Ireland so that any interested party can be taken to view the MMS software in action. This may sound easy, however, there are just a couple of complications.

Firstly, and probably most importantly, the only client we could find to take on the MMS system without first seeing it in action was the IRA. As you can imagine, their materials handling unit has it's hands full trying to keep track of the semtech, bazookas, and hand guns that are distributed to operational cells around the world. When I say has it's hands full, in the case of bomb maker Paddy Fitzpatrick, it should be has his hand full, but that is another story. They did try to keep track of various parts of Paddy's anatomy, but they were too widespread, even for MMS. For the IRA, the maintenance component of MMS is vitally important, as old one-armed Paddy will attest. They want to know the possibility that they will have a huge disaster on their hands where they are planning to blow up a member of the Royal Family, something goes horribly wrong and the best they get is Maggie Thatcher (???).

The heads of the IRA realise that while mistakes like that would increase their overall popularity, it would probably cost them dearly in terms of their credibility. That is why MMS software is so important to them. The British Government also seems to realise the power that the software puts into the hands of what they would call "criminals". To that end the Home Office has formally and officially "requested" that we include some sort of surveillance module within the software so that they can keep track of what the IRA is up to.

This is one of the moral dilemmas we face: would we rather spend 5 years in jail for supporting a terrorist organisation or 5 hours in an operating theatre having my kneecaps reconstructed? We have made an executive decision while I am here to drop the whole project. So I am going home to break the news to them, not a task I am looking forward too, I hate pain. I will be flying home on Air Lingus, the Irish official airline. My Uncle Paddy is one of the pilots and last time I flew with him I had a bit of time in the cockpit. The airport asked him for his height and position, he said "I'm five foot six and I'm up the front of the plane." He was given permission to land and said to co-pilot Mick "Give me quarter flaps and three quarters throttle, that runway is looking pretty short. A few minutes later, as we got closer he said "Co-Pilot Mick, that's a really short looking runway, give me half flaps and half throttle." As we got closer Paddy said "Mick, that runway is incredibly short, give me three quarters flaps and one quarter throttle. We hit the ground, Paddy screamed "Full flaps, reverse thrust, we skidded off into the grass. Paddy and Mick got out and Paddy said "That's the shortest runway I've ever seen in my life, but look at how wide it is!!"

I've got to tell you I get a little nervous flying...

At this point I launched into a hilarious 45 comedy show. Needless to say they were sucked in and had a great time.