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Kinzua Payroll Story
Hello:
My name is Richard Fettkether and I installed the payroll system for the Omak Mill and later the Kinzua payroll. IBM was suppose to deliver and implement for the Omak Mill. The argreement was to be completed by December 1968. About December 5th I received a call from Chuck Roberts from the Omak mill asking me to come to the office to discuss a solution to get this system up and running. The deadline was January 15. An impossible date. We finally decided that with enough help I would give it my best. I was working in Spokane at the time and new some other programmers that agreed to assist me. We had enough software completed that we could do the draw on January 15th. Some very interesting times. That gave me the rest of the month to finish the project. Mission accomplished. Several months later we put all the bells in the software per their request. When all the dust settled, I was asked if I would put the same system in the Kinzua Mill.
I agreed to do that, so Mr Roberts picked me up in Spokane and drove me to Kinzua. We arrived in the middle of the night and stayed on the 2nd floor of the office building. I worked all that weekend testing the to make sure we could transmit their date to Omak for processing. Finally had to have the phone company manually route the date via Portland, Seattle and then to Omak. Success.
I do not remember any Kinzua employee names but they were great people to work with. This was the first time I was ever involved with a company town. I grew up on a Iowa farm, went to college at the University of Montana, met Montana ranch girl and got married. I must have been 30 years old when I worked on this project. Great learning experience.
Richard Fettkether 71.15.188.8 (talk) 23:56, 19 July 2024 (UTC)Reply
