The Advent of the Mainframe Computer
In the fall of 1967 a representative of the McDonnell Automation Co., operating
out of his office in Houston, Texas, was on a visit to Philadelphia, The purpose
of this visit was to attend the laboratories of SmithKline & French in connection
with a MCAUTO proprietary computer program that SK & F had bought for their
in-house use. The MCAUTO representative was E.E, (Ned) Engman; the SK & F
representatives were J.R. (Jim) Snyder and Susan Gallagher. The program was MCAUTO's
Management Control System, the predecessor of its Management Scheduling and Control
System.
The program ran on the IBM 1410, one of IBM's early tape oriented
machines which was developed for business applications, but which
found significant use in engineering design, logistics and the simpler
technical applications, The program operated with four tapes, was
reasonably reliable and "user friendly," but best of all,
had Ned plugged in by MCAUTO to provide regional sales and assistance.
As he had done on a number of previous occasions, Ned Engman was on a routine
sales and troubleshooting call. He enjoyed the customer contact and, as he had
with a number of other customers, took advantage of the meeting to bounce around
some ideas he had about where he thought project management should be going and
hence what "computer support" should be provided. As an electrical
sales engineer, his conversations were directed towards his interests in computers
and networks. However, he was convinced that most programs up to that time, including
MCAUTO's, had not adequately tapped the wealth of knowledge and diversity of
project management practitioners.
This conviction was reinforced by chance input from random encounters with
such people as Eric Jenett of Brown & Root, Inc. in Houston and John King
with Bell Telephone Labs in Holmdell, New Jersey. Then again, if he never got
it completed, where would he find the "prospects list" or the show
or convention which really pulled out the people that would or should see a demonstration
of an upgraded MCS program? Thus were sown the seeds of both MCAUTO's next generation
MSCS as well as the Project Management Institute.
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Concept
Gains Ground
