Software Error Causes Crisis in Mississippi

marklyon writes "Mississippi's Alcohol Beverage Control division shutdown its distribution center for an indefinite amount of time to fix computer problems today at noon. A software update applied to the inventory and ordering software last week is malfunctioning, causing orders and inventory to be lost or misrouted. 'It's a software problem, and it's an operational problem. We've gotten a lot of product in and we've got it going to the wrong location ... and the location numbers were wiped out,' said tax commissioner Ed Buelow. Buelow said the distribution center will fulfill all orders placed before noon today. He said he hopes the system will be fixed in a few days, but it's possible it could take weeks. Until that time, Mississippi bars, restaurants, and liquor stores will not be able to purchase additional stock. Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix."

Central distribution, managed by the state?

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Wait, so every drop of alcohol in the entire state goes through one warehouse, and the state is in charge of running this warehouse?
And this seemed like a good idea?

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Government's Role?

[BandwidthHog]

A weekend without enough booze oughta help convince the populace that a single choke point on a large system is a bad idea, and the government being that choke point is a worse idea. There's absolutely no reason for alcohol not to be handled by the private sector. I live in a state that does this too, and it's just ridiculous on so many levels.

Sure this is somewhat off-topic, but screw it. The whole idea has always bugged me, and I don't even drink that often (maybe twice a month).

Sure they can't....

[morganjharvey]

Many retailers are already complaining that they were unable to order sufficient quantities to supply them if the bug takes more than a few days to fix.

Nice choice of words...

But all joking aside, isn't there some sort of fallback system so that at least partial distribution comes to mind? Pen and paper is just the first one to come to mind, after all, there had to be some human element in the wharehouse (unless they had robots pulling all the liquor, which would just be cool).

Had this been something more important, say the postal service, a hospital, or even a fast food chain, what would the fallback have been?

Exactly Why...

[jchawk]

This is exactly why government should not be involved in the business of selling alcohol... It just doesn't make any sense. Send it to the free market and regulate! Then if supplier A has problems with their software, union, whatever then supplier B can step in and fill the gap, without lost sales or tax reveneue.

Some states get it, some just simply don't.

Ontario has the same thing, it's pro/con

[cookie_cutter]

We have a similar thing in Ontario, Canada. It has some interesting characteristics:

Because the province buys all it's alcohol as a single buyer, it can demand, and gets, really awesome pricing deals; I believe about the lowest anywhere.

However, the consumer doesn't see much of this benefit directly, because the price is jacked up so that it isn't really cheaper than any other place. Of course, the difference goes to the tax coffers, paying for social programs like medicine and education. I think it's a good deal.

Also, I've never heard of any disaster like this one happening here. The cause isn't state control, it's having a single point of failure.

Misconceptions about ABC.

[animeit]

I thought I'd correct some facts about this topic. The majority of systems in Mississippi use MS office and server products, not Linux (unfortunately). In my opinion the MIS directors and Systems administors are not the best informed (or experienced for that matter), causing the problems we're seeing now. MS government is NOT migrating to open source, quite the contrary. Mississippi is a dry State. Only counties which have elected to be 'wet' sell liquor. It's a real pain if you live in a wet county and there are plenty of them here. Of course, beer isn't affected by this debacle as there are private distributors for anything with an alcohol content 6% or less. Alcohol purchase in Alabama is a hell of a lot more expensive than in Mississippi. That's why they come over here to get their bottles. It's not true that our liquor stores get great prices on liquor. Every liquor store in MS pays 7% State tax and an additional 7% excise tax on every case AND it's paid in advance. You also have to pay the city content tax to boot. And most of that tax money is spent by the MS Division of Medicaid. Certainly the most liberal and program rich of nearly every State in the US. It is true. The majority of liquor business are mom and pop operations. You don't like hearing from a State official that you 'need to purchase at least three weeks of liquor because we're going to be down for a MINIMUM of three weeks and maybe six.' If you've been to some of the liquor stores around here, you know they don't have that kind of cash to outlay. Just for a couple weeks worth of stock we're talking up to $10,000 or more for a small store. Yes folks, I'm one of those pissed off people.

Bad Software and Bad Jokes

[lcsjk]

This is a software problem, not an alcohol problem! And some ignoramus has no idea what AA is! This could happen in any industry, and for those of you who have never worked with JIT, it means placing an order far enough ahead so that the product arrives just before you run out of inventory; sometimes weeks in advance.

The real question here is "How do you test software to simulate a real world system without putting it on the system and then finding problems?"