Re: Using a computer where pen and paper would have sufficed!
(Shivers) My first "real" job was with a telecom equipment company (since acquired at least three times and probably deceased) at which _exactly_ this happened. Slightly before I arrived, the process to turn a list of orders to the factory into checking parts inventory and if needed ordering parts was entirely done on IBM "Tab" equipment that Herman Hollerith would have understood. This was replaced by shiny new System 3 computer and (allegedly) appropriate software. Which of course never worked. Had we been a bakery, we could have the "pulled" 2 dozen eggs but no flour to "build" an order for one cake.
It got so bad that the factory and engineering contrived a parallel system that allowed things to actually be built. Some of the documents were not literally "pen and paper", but "pencil on mylar".
Same the basic idea.
BTW: this was also the place where, when I asked the main operator why smoking was allowed in the machine room, they pulled a disk-pack off the shelf and blew smoke into it, saying "Don't hurt them none".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
