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Cross Huller Receives Ford Cylinder Head Business

28 February 2000

Cross Huller Receives Ford Cylinder Head Business

    STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich., Feb. 25 -- Cross Huller announced
today that Ford Motor Company has selected its Ludwigsburg, Germany
facility as the simultaneous engineering partner for a new cylinder head
manufacturing system.  Cross Huller expects to receive the final design and
build order for the high-volume flexible manufacturing equipment within the
next few months.  During simultaneous engineering, Ford and Cross Huller
engineers will finalize detailed design and build specifications, production
rates, site location and delivery schedules.
    Cross Huller is an established supplier to Ford Motor Company for cylinder
block production systems and recently received advance engineering orders in
the USA for a new cylinder block manufacturing system.  Alan Ruddock,
Executive Vice President of Huller Hille GmbH, believes that the company's
technological strength, global presence and proven commitment to Ford's
success contributed to its selection as the supplier for the cylinder head
manufacturing system.  "We have a strong track record of producing high
quality equipment fully capable of meeting all of Ford's requirements,
including aggressive, affordable cost targets," states Alan Ruddock.
    According to Dr. Manfred Berger, Vice President of Sales and Proposal
Engineering for Cross Huller, Germany: "Prior to the formation of our new
global Cross Huller business unit, we had supplied many high volume agile
production systems to our customers in Europe, but relatively few to the USA.
Our new global business unit now allows us to provide sophisticated agile
systems to our North American customers, while ensuring that we have the local
support necessary to make them a success."
    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, 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 and off-road/construction
industries.  Cross Huller - North America, supported by two major sister
divisions in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and Knowsley, England, provides a common
global machine tool architecture, while offering local application engineering
and support to each market area's unique needs.