When I was in Houston to visit TI I also had a tour of Dresser Industries inc.
They do oil well analysis.  The market is dominates by Schlumberger (90%).
Dresser is the only other major company that provides the services.

They manufacture several kinds of instruments that are sent down the well
to take measurements.  The data gathered is used to determine things like
if there is oil in the well, how porous the rock is, where the water is,
the thickness of the concrete casing, and what angle the well goes down
at.

They have several uses for computers and are currently evaluating what
to use for there data acquisition system and there system that crunches
the data.  They will most likely use an Intel board computer for the
data acquisition and a DEC system for the number crunching.

There system that they use in there design lab does not seem to be tied to
any of there other systems.  (It is a DEC system).  They also have a ???
system for doing mechanical drawings.

There is not a computer on every desk or even every engineers desk.  Where
there are computers they are in general not tied to other computers.
They did not seem to think that they had a need to tie everything together.
There manufacturing area was not very automated and there were no computers or
terminals around.

I think that Dresser could benefit greatly from an MPN system.  They would
have to be educated to the benefits.  They need someone to evaluate there
overall needs.  They may not be able to do this themselves.  I do not think
that our sales force could do a good job of it either.  This is a big problem
that needs to be solved.  Once we have MPN in lace how do we help a customer
realize how to use it in his complex business?  How can we bring it in
gradually?

