QA Management Services has performed an extensive audit of the company’s ability to operate into the Millennium.

This audit consisted of identifying all software or equipment that makes use of, or might possibly make use of date information, and obtaining statements of Year 2000 compliance from suppliers or manufacturers. In cases where such statements were unavailable, testing was performed in-house.

The definition of Year 2000 Compliance relied upon in this audit is as follows:

Year 2000 conformity means that neither performance nor functionality is affected by dates prior to, during and after the year 2000.

In particular:

Rule 1. No value for current date will cause any interruption in operation.

Rule 2. Date-based functionality must behave consistently for dates prior to, during and after the Year 2000.

Rule 3. In all interfaces and data storage, the century in any date must be specified either explicitly or by unambiguous algorithms or inferencing rules.

Rule 4. Year 2000 must be recognised as a leap year.

All identified non-compliances have been resolved, either by scheduling the replacement of the equipment, or by putting into place procedures to compensate for the non-compliance.

QATE/QA Management Software Products:

The software products "Auditmaster", "Calibrations", "Document Master" and "Maintenance Master" store dates in a year 2000 compliant manner. However, the products accept the entry of two digit years in date fields. While the software uses an algorithm to guess the likely four digit year at the time the data is entered, no assurance is given that this will always guess the correct date. To avoid the chance of an error, users should always enter four digit years in date fields.

Charles Miller

Y2K Officer.

Phil Wilton