Shaw Industries

Shaw Industries, Inc., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., is the world’s largest manufacturer of tufted broadloom carpet. Headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, Shaw sells carpeting for residential and commercial applications throughout the United States and exports to most markets worldwide.

In 1997, Shaw’s administrative applications ran on IBM’s RS6000 technology. Shaw’s Manufacturing Execution Programs (MEP) ran on Digital Equipment Corporation’s VAX OpenVMS technology. Shaw was faced with OpenVMS human resource shortages and the need to standardize technology across a single midrange platform. IBM was selected to provide the hardware solution, and Sector7 was chosen to bridge the gap from OpenVMS to IBM’s RS6000 technology.

Sector7 uses a five-step blueprint process for moving applications from OpenVMS to AIX. The first step was a situational analysis. The MEP application was developed using DCL, TDMS, Rdb, RMS, COBOL, and DECnet. DEC Command Language (DCL) is the control language for OpenVMS, while Terminal Display Management System (TDMS) allows the creation of complex forms that integrate with Rdb, the proprietary relational database for OpenVMS systems. Record Management System (RMS) handles file management within the VMS operating system. DECnet, a task-to-task protocol, operates over Ethernet, fast interconnect, or serial connections.

After completing the situational analysis, Sector7 developed a migration strategy that aligned with Shaw’s tactical and strategic business goals. Sector7 offers both low-risk migration and reengineering solutions using Business Logic Extraction (BLE). The migration process focuses on making the minimal changes necessary for the code to function on the new system while addressing issues such as text translation, non-portable code, and hardware differences. BLE goes further by extracting business logic to maximize the new system’s features, reusing code where possible, and rewriting when necessary. This process typically results in better performance and code quality.

• COBOL was ported to AIX using the Microfocus COBOL product, with Sector7's tools converting DEC’s COBOL flavor to Microfocus COBOL.
• RMS was migrated using Sector7’s VX/RMS product, which supports all VMS file types and access modes on UNIX and NT file systems.
• DCL scripts were converted using VX/DCL, allowing all VMS commands to run on UNIX or Windows NT without modification.
• The Rdb database was reengineered to Sybase, Shaw’s corporate standard, and RDO was converted to SQL.
• TDMS was reengineered into the standard forms package integrated with Microfocus COBOL.

The project was completed in 14 months, allowing Shaw to retain its software investment on corporate-standard hardware and software while leveling human resource needs between administrative and manufacturing areas.