THE WRONG APPROACH TO THE POSTAL SERVICE'S I.T. PROBLEM
Subject: Manufacturing Information Access Software System (MIASS)
This memo is to announce the development of a new plant- wide software system. We are currently building a data warehouse that will contain all plant manufacturing data for mail processing and postal administrative functions. The program is referred to as the "Manufacturing Information Access Software System" (MIASS).
Next Monday at 9:00 there will be a meeting in which I will show MIASS. We will continue to hold demonstrations throughout the month so that all employees will have an opportunity to get a good look at MIASS.
As for the status of the implementation of the program, I have not addressed the networking aspects so currently only one person can be in MIASS at a time. This should change as MIASS expands.
A few employess are using the program already and have come to depend on it. Just this morning I noticed the slackers that had more time by doing less work were busy putting their nose in in MIASS. I've also noticed that the hard-working personnel that are picking up after the slackers have not had time to look at MIASS. Just last week, when asked to enter some information into the program, I had a secretary say to me "I'm a little nervous, I've never put anything in MIASS before." I volunteered to help her through her first time and when we were through she admitted that it was relatively painless and she was actually looking forward to doing it again. She went so far as to say that after using SAP and Oracle, she was ready to kiss MIASS.
I know there are concerns over the virus that was found in MIASS upon initial installation, but I am pleased to say the virus has been eliminated and we were able to save MIASS. In the future, however, protection will be required prior to entering MIASS.
We planned this database to encompass all information associated with the Postal Service. So as you begin using the program, feel free to put anything you want into MIASS. As MIASS grows larger, we envision a time when it will be commonplace to walk by an office and see a manager hand a paper to an employee and say "Here, stick this in MIASS."
This program has already demonstrated great benefit to the company during recent POOM audits. After requesting certain historical data the district management was amazed at how quickly we provided the information. When asked how the numbers could be retrieved so rapidly our Postmaster proudly stated "Simple, I just pulled them out of MIASS".
