First with the Latest

by Graeme Kemlo,
Today's Computers, April 1985

Dick Johnson: "We are not yet at the stage of one on every desk"

Dick Johnson, one of the first people in BHP to have a non-mechanical calculator, was also first with a PC.

The senior planning engineer with the steel operations group gave away his ker-plunking mechanical adding machine for the modern desktop version in the late 60s. At the time it was a major step forward; Johnson spent much of his day working with spreadsheets planning resource availability for steel production at BHP sites around Australia.

"It was something to get one of these new calculators, but I found I was at my desk calculating all day long," Johnson says. "Not only were the budgets long and complicated, but there were many changes and these required manual recalculation. Inevitably I would forget an effect of a change and inaccuracies would creep in. I had an accuracy problem to add to my time problem."

Johnson recognised that computers were probably going to help, so he moved progressively from a punch-card reader hanging off the mainframe to printer terminals and visual terminals in the late 70s. "Accuracy certainly improved, but there were no time gains for the first few years," he says.

By that time he had bought himself a personal computer for home use — a Cromemco — and he could see the value of one at work, but the PC support group in BHP was pushing for the IBM, and Johnson did not agree.

"It was not the best machine available in terms of speed and capacity, but Lloyd Borrett argued — quite rightly in retrospect — that it would attract a wealth of software," Johnson says.

Soon Johnson was revelling in the IBM PC, shifting Basic programs from the mini and mainframes he had been using a Basic compiler. But the major change was a program then unknown in Australia: Lotus 1-2-3.

"It offered the spreadsheeting capability to cope with constant changes — people changing the rules, changing their ideas," Johnson says. "I had been running a fairly old program, which equated the raw steel production back to its components — iron ore, flux, coke, coal, blast furnace capacity — and tied them all together to make sure the budgets matched. It had carried with me across all the systems we had used on mainframes and minis, but finally Lotus 1-2-3 solved the problems."

Johnson tried 1-2-3's big brother, Symphony, but abandoned it after a week, suggesting that "it was very good in combining text and spreadsheets, but it sucked a lot of memory out of the XT".

Johnson believes that BHP's approach to the personal computer revolution might provide some lessons for business. "They went into it with mild reluctance; they had their fingers rather badly burned a few years earlier, spent a lot of money, and could quite  plainly see they hadn't got results. Over  the years they had built one of the best  computer installations in the country, but nevertheless with the PC rush they were never quite wholehearted.

"There are a lot of PCs around BHP now, including 65 at the Port Kembla works alone, but we are not yet at the stage of one for every desk. That will probably come because we have quite clearly 97 percent of the battle won. But not everyone is going to be given one on whim. They will have to make out an  intelligent case to get one."

Johnson says one of the strengths of BHP's move into PCs was the early decision to standardise. "I'm not a great rap for the IBM, but the decision to support only the IBM meant we all worked together and pulled together," he says. "That doesn't mean we all use our machines in, exactly the same way, or even as the support group recommends. We run a totally different directory structure to the floor below, and Kembla probably has different needs again."

The support group and EDP managers do not dictate or attempt to control the use of PCs. "A PC, after all, is a personal computer," Johnson says. "An information centre provides information and you don't want control, you want advice and the freedom to use the  machine in the best way for you. Overall it has worked out very well — there's a lot of value in doing it the way BHP, has."