INDEC: First Annual Technical Benchmarking Conference Planned

DETROIT, March 25 -- Engineering, product development, marketing and data-management experts from some of the world's leading automotive companies will meet in Detroit for an inaugural North American Technical Benchmarking Conference on Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 5-6.

The conference will be held at the Radisson Kingsley Hotel and Suites in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and will feature speakers from a number of automotive manufacturers, Tier One auto suppliers and industry-leading consulting firms.

The two-day program is being sponsored in part by INDEC, the world's only full-service provider of benchmarking data-management tools for the automotive industry. A similar benchmarking conference has been held in Europe for the past four years. The 2002 event, held in Stuttgart, Germany, featured speakers from BMW Group, Opel, Freudenberg, Hella, Visteon, ZF and Accenture.

"We expect the North American conference to become an annual event as well," said Torsten Beinke, president of INDEC. "Sophisticated new software and technology are dramatically changing the way automakers and their suppliers use and manage critical benchmarking information."

Headquartered in Lippstadt, Germany, INDEC's sales have grown by more than 30 percent in each of the past five years, and its licensing agreements for technical benchmarking software have jumped from 30 to more than 1,400 since 1998. The company's global automotive clients include DaimlerChrysler, Hella, Johnson Controls, Lear and Visteon.

Details on the 2003 North American Technical Benchmarking Conference, as well as information about INDEC and the fifth annual 2003 European Technical Benchmarking Symposium planned for Nov. 19-20 in Stuttgart, are available on the Internet at www.indec.de .