`Business as Usual' Approach Earns Y2K Team Prestigious
             President's Achievement Award From Bayer Corporation

    PITTSBURGH, Sept. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- The "no news is good news" headline
continues to cause celebration among Bayer Corporation's 50-plus facilities
across the United States, as crisis preparedness procedures established to
combat the millennium bug offer protection against other operational
disruptions as well.
    Now, the group of Pittsburgh employees who helped Bayer ring in the New
Year Y2K-glitch-free have been honored with a 2000 Bayer President's
Achievement Award (PAA).  The "Corporate Y2K Resource" continuous improvement
team is one of 10 teams throughout the United States and Canada that received
the award this year.
    The PAAs are designed to recognize teams within the company for their
significant contributions using Bayer's Continuous Improvement Process.  Teams
were honored today during a live satellite event transmitted to Bayer
employees around North America.

    A "Business as Usual" Approach
    One important goal of Y2K preparation was to help ensure that the flow of
product from manufacturer to customer would not be interrupted.  While many
companies stockpiled inventory, Bayer's "Corporate Y2K Resource" team adopted
a "business as usual" approach.  They supported Bayer's 11 divisions in
developing contingency plans to keep plants running and product flowing
independent of potentially inoperable computer and production systems.  While
the contingency plans were not needed on Jan. 1, Bayer now has in place
guidelines for better handling power outages or other potential disruptions
such as those caused by inclement weather.
    "We already could have saved from $300 million to $400 million worth of
irreplaceable inventory by implementing procedures put in place in preparation
for Y2K," said Susan Cullen, director of SAP deployment, biological products,
Biological Business.  The Business' North Carolina facility stores human blood
plasma used to manufacture blood component therapeutical products, such as
Prolastin(R) Alfa1-Proteinase Inhibitor (Human), the only treatment for a rare
lung disease.  The plasma must be kept cool, so it is housed in large,
refrigerated warehouses.
    Prior to Y2K, there were minimal back-up systems in place.  As part of Y2K
preparation, the facility developed a contingency plan and worked with its
local power company to install power generators.  The power generators were
not needed at the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, but were nearly called into
action during an unrelated power outage less than a month later.
    "When we lost power, we turned to our Y2K contingency plan," said Cullen.
"We immediately called our power company to determine the amount of time they
needed before the power would go back on.  In this case, the power came back
on within our plan's predetermined number of hours, but we and our customers
felt reassured knowing that we had the power generators in place to back us up
if the power company hadn't been able to meet our deadline."

    A New Year's Resolution Fulfilled
    In preparation for Y2K, the "Corporate Y2K Resource" team needed to ensure
all mission critical hard goods (equipment) and software were Y2K ready.  In
many cases, when business divisions were asked whether specific hard goods or
software should be made Y2K ready, it was determined that newer, already
Y2K-compliant products could be purchased with less hassle -- and often less
cost -- than would be required to repair the old systems or equipment.  As a
result, a large number of systems were retired from service or replaced with
improved products.
    "The old equipment and software may have worked very well, but rather than
take the time and expense to upgrade them, the decision was made to replace
them with new products," said David Law, "Corporate Y2K Resource" co-team
leader.  "In the end, both Bayer and Bayer's customers benefited.  We now have
newer, better hard goods and software to serve our customers."
    Bayer Corporation is a research-based company with major businesses in
health care and life sciences and chemicals.  The company had 1999 sales of
$8.9 billion and employs approximately 22,200 people.  Bayer Corporation is
investing $9 billion in capital expenditures and research and development from
2000 through the year 2004.  2000 capital investment and R&D expenditures are
projected to total $1.6 billion.  Bayer Corporation, with headquarters in
Pittsburgh, is a member of the worldwide Bayer Group, a $29 billion
international life sciences, polymers and specialty chemicals group based in
Leverkusen, Germany.

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