Cross Huller Receives Linamar Cylinder Head Business

    STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., Jan. 25 Cross Huller announced
today that Exkor, a division of Linamar, has selected its facility in
Ludwigsburg, Germany as the supplier for a new agile manufacturing (cubing)
system to prepare cast aluminum cylinder heads for final machining in a
separate Cross Huller agile production system.  The equipment will be
manufactured in Cross Huller's plants in Ludwigsburg, Germany and Port Huron,
Mich., USA from mid-2001 and start operation in Exkor's new Windsor, Canada
facility in early 2002.
    This is the second major order for a Cross Huller Agile manufacturing
system in North America in the last few months.  These orders require Cross
Huller to supply over 250 high performance Specht machining centers along with
associated material handling systems, system integration and project
management.
    Cross Huller is a business unit of Huller Hille GmbH, a division of
Thyssen Production Systems.  Headquartered in Essen, Germany, it is a 2.7
billion-DM division of ThyssenKrupp AG, with 8,000 employees in ten countries.
Thyssen Production Systems focuses its global activities on the development,
production and service of metal-cutting machine tools, automated assembly
systems and automotive body shop systems.
    Cross Huller - North America is ISO 9001 certified, QS-9000-TE supplement
compliant.  Cross Huller provides low, medium and high volume modular transfer
line and agile production systems to the global automotive and off-
road/construction industries.  Cross Huller - North America, together with
major sister divisions in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and Knowsley, UK, provides a
common global machine tool architecture, while offering local application
engineering and support to each market area's unique needs.