Bausch & Lomb – Europe

Lead Consultant: Joseph M. Martellaro

Bausch & Lomb – Europe (B&L) started a Year 2000 project but could not establish its priority due to internal politics. Other projects quickly took top priority. One project resulted in the consolidation of the 14 distribution warehouses in Europe into a central distribution center and network. To resurrect the project the CIO-Europe brought together a half dozen IT people and an outside consultant to install BPCS 6+. If BPCS could be installed, the pressure would be taken off for the Y2k. The group assessed the scope of the project and realized that the project was really 18+ projects; each subsidiary had modified BPCS or some other package to meet its own needs. The group had more problems than they had time. Mr. Martellaro was brought in to develop a plan that would meet Y2k and other EEC requirements that would be following immediately. My alternative was to re-engineer the businesses to the standards of operations that would be necessary to meet EEC requirements for the year 2002. The EEC was to go to the common monetary unit, the Euro, in 1999; and in 2002 customers could buy goods across borders. Therefore, B&L and other companies doing business in Europe would need to standardize prices, pricing policies, and sales and delivery policies. Standardization of policies and the resulting business re-engineering needed to be performed either way by 2002. If it were performed after Y2k was fixed, the software would effectively have to be re-installed again. Mr. Martellaro developed the plan, organized the teams, presented to top and local management in Europe, and set B&L on its path for the next 5 years.