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Software Error Causes Crisis in Mississippi
marklyon writes "Mississippi's Alcohol Beverage Control division shutdown its distribution center for an indefinite amount of time to fix computer problems today at noon. A software update applied to the inventory and ordering software last week is malfunctioning, causing orders and inventory to be lost or misrouted. 'It's a software problem, and it's an operational problem. We've gotten a lot of product in and we've got it going to the wrong location ... and the location numbers were wiped out,' said tax commissioner Ed Buelow. Buelow said the distribution center will fulfill all orders placed before noon today. He said he hopes the system will be fixed in a few days, but it's possible it could take weeks. Until that time, Mississippi bars, restaurants, and liquor stores will not be able to purchase additional stock. Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix."
This is the downside of Just In Time inventory -- the system has little resiliancy to burps in the supply chain. Every step should have enough buffer to handle problems (ie bad weather, computer problems, disasters, etc).
I call shotgun!
Wait, so every drop of alcohol in the entire state goes through one warehouse, and the state is in charge of running this warehouse?
And this seemed like a good idea?
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A weekend without enough booze oughta help convince the populace that a single choke point on a large system is a bad idea, and the government being that choke point is a worse idea. There's absolutely no reason for alcohol not to be handled by the private sector. I live in a state that does this too, and it's just ridiculous on so many levels.
Sure this is somewhat off-topic, but screw it. The whole idea has always bugged me, and I don't even drink that often (maybe twice a month).
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
screw up the software, can't get drunk
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There are other counties were even beer isn't sold & others where beer isn't available but liquor is. My personal favorite is Oktibbeha County (home of Miss'ippi State University) where, for many years, beer could only be purchased by the case, hot.
And the state commission doesn't control the sale of 'shine, anyway, thank goodness.
Contrary to what all the damyankees on /. think, most of the deep rednecks switched over to crystal meth several years back...
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Mississippi's divorce rate jumped to a whopping 72% this weekend. But on a higher note, there were no DUI's...
If it's a typical organization, the whole point of automating the system was to get rid of all of the people who staffed the operation when it used pen and paper. That means that the institutional knowledge of the old system is probably working at the local WalMart. The old forms and processes no longer exist.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix.
Nice choice of words...
But all joking aside, isn't there some sort of fallback system so that at least partial distribution comes to mind? Pen and paper is just the first one to come to mind, after all, there had to be some human element in the wharehouse (unless they had robots pulling all the liquor, which would just be cool).
Had this been something more important, say the postal service, a hospital, or even a fast food chain, what would the fallback have been?
This is exactly why government should not be involved in the business of selling alcohol... It just doesn't make any sense. Send it to the free market and regulate! Then if supplier A has problems with their software, union, whatever then supplier B can step in and fill the gap, without lost sales or tax reveneue.
Some states get it, some just simply don't.
This sounds like a job for these guys
Because the province buys all it's alcohol as a single buyer, it can demand, and gets, really awesome pricing deals; I believe about the lowest anywhere.
However, the consumer doesn't see much of this benefit directly, because the price is jacked up so that it isn't really cheaper than any other place. Of course, the difference goes to the tax coffers, paying for social programs like medicine and education. I think it's a good deal.
Also, I've never heard of any disaster like this one happening here. The cause isn't state control, it's having a single point of failure.
The Whiskey Rebellion took place in Pennsylvania, not Mississippi, and was in response to Federal taxation. It has nothing to do with direct state control of alcohol distribution channels. Taxation does not imply government monopoly.
President Washington sent 13,000 troops to arrest a handful of men, whom he pardoned after they were tried and convicted.
As "rebellions" go it was pretty pitiful.
The "eurofag freak's" point stands. Have you by any chance counted your chromosomes lately? I think you may have one to spare.
KFG
This weekend is the Ole Miss-Alabama football game in Oxford. If we run out of beer, you are likely to read about riots on the front page of national newspapers. This might actually bring attention to our archaic, prohibition-era alcohol laws. Like, for example, only warm beer can be bought at stores and no alcohol sales on Sunday at all, unless you drive 15 miles across the county line, where you can buy all the cold beer you want on Sunday, but not wine or liquor.
I will keep you posted from the front lines.
I thought I'd correct some facts about this topic. The majority of systems in Mississippi use MS office and server products, not Linux (unfortunately). In my opinion the MIS directors and Systems administors are not the best informed (or experienced for that matter), causing the problems we're seeing now. MS government is NOT migrating to open source, quite the contrary. Mississippi is a dry State. Only counties which have elected to be 'wet' sell liquor. It's a real pain if you live in a wet county and there are plenty of them here. Of course, beer isn't affected by this debacle as there are private distributors for anything with an alcohol content 6% or less. Alcohol purchase in Alabama is a hell of a lot more expensive than in Mississippi. That's why they come over here to get their bottles. It's not true that our liquor stores get great prices on liquor. Every liquor store in MS pays 7% State tax and an additional 7% excise tax on every case AND it's paid in advance. You also have to pay the city content tax to boot. And most of that tax money is spent by the MS Division of Medicaid. Certainly the most liberal and program rich of nearly every State in the US. It is true. The majority of liquor business are mom and pop operations. You don't like hearing from a State official that you 'need to purchase at least three weeks of liquor because we're going to be down for a MINIMUM of three weeks and maybe six.' If you've been to some of the liquor stores around here, you know they don't have that kind of cash to outlay. Just for a couple weeks worth of stock we're talking up to $10,000 or more for a small store. Yes folks, I'm one of those pissed off people.
This is a software problem, not an alcohol problem! And some ignoramus has no idea what AA is! This could happen in any industry, and for those of you who have never worked with JIT, it means placing an order far enough ahead so that the product arrives just before you run out of inventory; sometimes weeks in advance.
The real question here is "How do you test software to simulate a real world system without putting it on the system and then finding problems?"