The year 2000 means more than just a new millennium for the food process industry. It heralds a potential minefield of problems for companies and their computer-based systems. Computer programs that require the actual date for data storage, calculations etc. may be subject to malfunctions when the century changes. Over the last five years IT professionals have become more and more conscious that the old standard date format ddmmyy (day month year) will nor be able to handle the shift to the next millennium. However; the process industry has been slow in its response to address this problem. Companies in general have focused considerable attention on their higher level business systems such as accounting and order/delivery systems, while often ignoring potential problems at the manufacturing level. Computer-based data acquisition and process control systems frequently work with date cones for data storage ann scheduled operations. This paper focuses primarily on the impact of the year 2000 problem on the factory floor and process control systems such as SCADA.