>From  this morning's WSJ.

Robert Folsom
================
December 20, 1999
Factories Plan to Halt or Scale Back
Most Operations Ahead of Y2K Bug
By ROBERT GUY MATTHEWS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


Call it the Y2K freeze.

Across the country, mills, chemical plants and factories will
temporarily halt or scale back operations on New Year's Eve as a final
safeguard against a possible Y2K computer glitch. Although U.S.
industrial companies have spent an estimated $5 billion testing and
bringing their computers into compliance, mills and plants that
routinely deal with explosive chemicals and super-hot metals can be some
of the most dangerous places to be if something goes wrong.

The Y2K, or year 2000, computer problem arises when older computers read
the "00" in the date Jan. 1, 2000, as 1900, and thus shut down or
malfunction.

"We aren't worried," says D. John Armstrong, a spokesman for USX-U.S.
Steel Group. "But we want to be sure." That's why U.S. Steel will
suspend operations at its steelmaking facilities before midnight Dec. 31
and resume them sometime the next day. At Mon Valley Works, one of U.S.
Steel's three iron-melting facilities in the country, the blast furnace
and some other related machinery will be shut down eight hours before
the end of 1999.

The blast furnace heats raw material to at least 2,680 degrees to make
molten iron. Crews will carefully empty the hot metal out of the furnace
and then inject steam into it to suspend the melting operation. The
furnace must remain hot throughout, or it will be damaged. As a result,
New Year's weekend crews will continue to fuel the furnaces to maintain
a high temperature.

That particular maintenance process is done routinely about every six
weeks, says Fred Harnack, the general manager at Mon Valley, which makes
sheet steel for use in appliances, automobiles and construction. He says
that the blast furnace, the most critical and potentially dangerous
piece of machinery, will be brought back into service about four hours
after midnight. In all, the company says that 3,500 tons of metal won't
be produced because of the suspension of the blast furnace. But because
this has all been planned, no orders to customers will go unfulfilled,
Mr. Armstrong says.


In Japan, some major steelmakers, such as Nippon Steel Corp., Kobe Steel
Ltd., and Kawasaki Steel Corp., have plans to halt several of their
blast furnaces before midnight, with resumption expected the next day.
This New Year's Day poses a bigger burden on companies that operate
mills and plants year-round, 24 hours a day. If they are shut off
entirely, equipment worth millions of dollars could be permanently
damaged. At International Paper Co., all the company's U.S. operations
will "be in some form of operation," says Stephen Schaefgen, director of
the company's Year-2000 Program. The company has studied each of its 31
mills around the world. In the U.S., "some lines will slow back. Others
are not really going to alter operations at all," he says. As an extra
precaution, additional staff will be on site.

Overseas, International Paper says, it will "lock down" its two huge
mills in Kwidzyn, Poland, and Svetogorsk, Russia, because of the Y2K
uncertainty in those countries. Jack Cox, spokesman for International
Paper, said that it will take 24 hours for a "controlled shutdown" to be
completed. But the mills won't be entirely shut down, because the
boilers that heat the machines also provide some heat to each town.

Though production is halted periodically for maintenance, the shutdown
of the European mills a day before New Year's will be a slow and tedious
process costing the company production of 700 tons of paper each day.
The company will turn off the machines in succession, throw a tarp over
the equipment and place locks on the tarp to prevent workers from
harming themselves. Mr. Cox says that he expects the mills to be out of
production for several days.

Many industrial companies say their biggest concern lies with suppliers,
such as power companies and water providers. A disruption in electricity
or the water supply, which is often used to prevent equipment from
overheating and starting fires, poses particular concerns. Mark Tomasch,
spokesman for LTV Corp., said some of the company's plants have their
own power supply in case of outages. Plants that don't will suspend
operations just before midnight and resume New Year's Day.

Railroad companies, which supply materials and goods to the plants and
mills, are taking their own precautions. Union Pacific Corp., Omaha,
Neb., will stop trains New Year's Eve for varying periods while the
company tests the signal systems in each of the three time zones in
which it operates. As soon as the railroad verifies the systems are
working properly, Union Pacific says, it will resume operations starting
with commuter trains in Chicago, followed by Amtrak trains and then its
own freight trains.

Norfolk Southern Corp., Norfolk, Va., plans to suspend all its freight
trains before midnight on Dec. 31; early on New Year's Day, the company
will begin to run selected trains and gradually restore normal
operations by 7 a.m. Jan. 2. In many cases, factories and plants are
already shuttered anyway because of the holidays. The National
Association of Manufacturers says a survey, which will be released this
month, shows its members are confident and aren't stockpiling goods in
anticipation of being out of service for an extended period of time.

-- Dan Machalaba contributed to this article.

Write to Robert Guy Matthews at robertguy.matthews@wsj.com1