Applied Industrial Technologies Receives 2004 Power Transmission Supplier of the Year Award From Honda of America

CLEVELAND, May 26, 2005 -- Applied Industrial Technologies , through its Columbus, OH and Sidney, OH service centers, has received the Power Transmission Supplier of the Year Award from Honda of America. The award is presented to suppliers who excel in the areas of service, quality, cost, delivery, management philosophy and achieving overall end user customer satisfaction. This is the first year Honda has presented Supplier of the Year Awards to its MRO partners.

Honda of America has more than 3,000 MRO suppliers of which only 80 were invited to the Supplier Conference held April 6 in Marysville, OH. From those 80, a Supplier of the Year was selected from each of Honda's eight commodity groupings. The evaluation timeframe was April 1, 2004 through March 31, 2005. More than 400 Honda team members had input on which suppliers would be awarded.

"Servicing a great customer like Honda brings out the best in our Applied teams," said Jeremie Brooks, Strategic Alliance Manager-Automotive for Applied. "Our Columbus and Sidney service centers value the relationships they've developed with the five Honda plant locations they service."

Honda's U.S. manufacturing operations began with the Honda of America motorcycle plant near Marysville, Ohio. Today, Honda also operates two auto plants in Ohio -- an automotive engine plant and a transmission plant.

With more than 430 facilities and 4,300 employee-associates across North America, Applied Industrial Technologies is an industrial distributor that offers more than 2 million parts critical to the operations of MRO and OEM customers in virtually every industry. In addition, Applied provides engineering, design and systems integration for industrial and fluid power applications, as well as customized mechanical, fabricated rubber and fluid power shop services. For its fiscal year ended June 30, 2004, Applied posted sales of $1.52 billion. Applied can be visited on the Internet at http://www.applied.com/ .