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Five Freudenberg-NOK Facilities Earn RMA SHIP Awards

28 March 2000

Five Freudenberg-NOK Facilities Earn RMA SHIP Awards For Outstanding Employee Safety and Health Records

    PLYMOUTH, Mich., March 27 Five Freudenberg-NOK production
facilities recently won the Rubber Manufacturers Association's (RMA) 1999
Safety and Health Improvement Program (SHIP) Awards for outstanding
performance and dedicated safety efforts.
    Freudenberg-NOK plants in Bensenville, Ind., Santa Ana, Calif., and
Cleveland and LaGrange, Ga. won the RMA SHIP Excellence Award for achieving a
lost workday incidence rate at least 75 percent better than the RMA plant
average.
    Honored with the RMA SHIP Improvement Award -- for improving their lost
workday incidence rates by at least 20 percent during 1999 -- were
Freudenberg-NOK facilities in Morristown, Ind., and Cleveland and LaGrange,
Ga.
    "As a perennial winner of the SHIP Awards, Freudenberg-NOK has an on-going
commitment to providing a safe working environment for our employees," said
Joseph C. Day, Freudenberg-NOK chairman and CEO.  "Just as we pursue
perfection in our products, we will continue to strive for continuous
improvement in our safety performance, until all of our plants are incident-
free."
    Founded in 1915, the Rubber Manufacturers Association is the national
trade association of the rubber industry.  Its members include more than 100
companies and affiliated organizations which produce thousands of finished
rubber and tire products.
    Plymouth, Mich.-based Freudenberg-NOK is part of the Freudenberg and NOK
Group Companies, which have total annual sales of more than $6.5 billion.
With global automotive sales of approximately $4 billion, the Freudenberg and
NOK Group ranks among the world's top 20 automotive suppliers and is one of
only eight in the top 100 that has global balance in each of the three major
automotive markets -- Asia, Europe and North America.
    Through a global network of facilities spanning 27 countries with some
23,000 automotive employees worldwide, the supplier group offers its
automotive customers globally integrated products, including sealing packages
for transmissions, engines, brakes, axles and steering, NVH (noise, vibration
and harshness) components and packages, and all rubber, plastic and PTFE
components for suspension, electrical and fuel systems.
    The Freudenberg and NOK Group also offers an extensive portfolio of
precision-molded products for the aerospace, appliance, business machine,
fluid power, marine, medical, off-highway equipment and recreational vehicle
markets.  For more information, visit the Freudenberg-NOK web site at
http://www.freudenberg-nok.com