Would an FMEA have Prevented the Y2K problem?

[Howard Atkins]

I heared a story today that in the late 1970's there was a scare as with the 2K bug because in those days the computers worked on one digit. There were problems, I am sure some of you remember this better than I.
If they had performed FMEA then on the process and used APQP techniques to solve the problem then the 2k bug would not be here.

 

[Marc]

There were programmers with foresight but it often came down to saving 2 digit spaces - remember, things were 'simpler' then. No 6 gig HD and 128 mbytes of ram stuff sitting on folks desks. NO PC's during the 70's for that matter. There was a good article a while back in InfoWorld - some time last fall as I remember - which talked about this issue. I'm not excusing it - but in the early 1980's there was the belief that software was 'evolutionary' and as such by the time the year 2000 came the evolution would take care of such matters - there was a belief that multiple changes would be made. Part of the reason was that back then 'pivot' dates were sufficient to address the 2 bit issue for many years. I must admit, as rapidly as the technology has advanced, it's hard to say what an FMEA would have even considered.