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Cross Huller (North America) Streamlines Operations

8 November 1999

Cross Huller (North America) Streamlines Operations

    FRASER, Mich., Nov. 5 -- Cross Huller (North America)
announced today its plans to streamline operations in North America.
Effective January 2000, Cross Huller will build all new major machine orders
out of its existing Port Huron facility and phase out production in its Fraser
facility.  At the same time, it will relocate administration, sales and
engineering functions to a new, custom-designed Technical Center in Sterling
Heights.  Cross Huller's other facility in Windsor, Ontario will specialize in
machine retools/reworks, single machine orders and supply pre-tested
assemblies to the Port Huron plant for final integration.
    Cross Huller's 144,000 square foot manufacturing plant in Port Huron was
custom-built in 1981 and has outstanding design features to help build world-
class machine tools.  These include in-floor coolant systems and I-beam
reinforcements to simulate factory production conditions, as well as large
customer conference areas for technical reviews, customer project team
meetings, etc.
    The new 31,000 square foot technical and administration center in the
Lakeside Mall area of Sterling Heights, MI will provide a large, modern,
highly productive environment that allows Cross Huller to place key functions
close to one another, improving internal communication and speeding up
communications with customers.  Its location has been carefully chosen to
minimize travel between key customers, Port Huron and Windsor facilities, and
major suppliers.
    According to Robert Pelachyk, Executive Vice President and General Manager
of Cross Huller (North America), "We are very excited about our move and the
opportunity to streamline our business.  Cross Huller is a technologically
strong company with outstanding business opportunities.  Future growth should
provide job openings for experienced machine tool technical professionals and
skilled tradespeople at our Sterling Heights Technical Center and also at our
Port Huron Facility."
    Cross Huller is ISO9001 Certified, QS9000-TE Supplement Compliant, and
recently received Ford's prestigious Q1 award.  Cross Huller provides low,
medium and high volume Modular Transfer Line and Agile Production Systems to
the global automotive industry and off-road/construction industry.  Cross
Huller (North America) is supported by two major sister divisions in Germany
and the U.K. to provide a common, global machine tool architecture, while
still providing local application engineering and support to each market
area's unique needs.
    Cross Huller is a division of Thyssen Production Systems.  Headquartered
in Essen, Germany, it is a DM 2.7 billion division of ThyssenKrupp AG, with
8,000 employees in 10 nations.  Thyssen Production Systems focuses its global
activities on the development, production and service of metalcutting machine
tools, automated assembly systems and automotive body shop systems.