For Immediate Release

EMERYVILLE, Calif., February 11, 2000-TechniCon Corp. announced today that SMC Pneumatics, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of pneumatic automation components, has selected TechniCon, a leading provider of electronic commerce solutions for highly variable products, to develop its forthcoming product selection Web site. The new SMC site is based on TechniCon's award-winning CustomCommerce technology, which will streamline SMC's mass customization process for millions of differently configured products.

The announcement further demonstrates the trend for manufacturers to turn to the Web to help them simplify the configuration and sale of complex, highly variable products. Increasingly, manufacturers offer a dizzying array of options to customers. For example, a Ford Explorer now comes with 2.5 million variations; an office desk from Steelcase, Inc. has 1.2 million variations. Purchasing products with innumerable options has become far too complex and expensive for traditional buying processes, so companies are now turning to next-generation Web technology to solve this problem.

SMC will use TechniCon's CustomCommerce technology to create a product selection Web site that will help its customers sort through 8,000 different basic products, each of which come with up to one million variations. CustomCommerce will enable SMC's customers - largely engineers who design factory automation equipment - to select and configure components far more quickly than before. The software accomplishes this through TechniCon's advanced parametric searching and sizing technology, as well as solution-based selection, which analyzes specific design scenarios/problems specified by buyers and then delivers a list of products directly to buyers' desktops.

"CustomCommerce revolutionizes the way our customers select and configure products," said Tony Hutchinson, SMC Marketing Manager. "Many competitors are still supplying their customers with printed catalogs. Engineers often spend hours sorting through these books to find the correct component and product number. Now, they'll just log onto our Web site, tell us what they want, and within a few minutes find and configure the product they need and download it into their assembly drawings."

"As the move toward mass customization accelerates, static catalogs and brochures are no longer an adequate method of conveying product information to customers," said Anthony Mirante, President of TechniCon. "CustomCommerce provides the only way for manufacturers to efficiently and cost-effectively present and sell products with thousands - even millions - of variations."

SMC Site Features Fast Online Product Selection and Dynamic Visualization SMC sells numerous different products, including cylinders, valves, FRL's, fittings, flow controls, tubing, vacuum equipment, instrumentation products and hundreds of specialty products for individual markets. Due to the wide variety of applications for these components, a single product can be configured in as many as one million different ways, making the selection and configuration process complicated.

To help SMC customers identify and order the correct components faster, TechniCon has created a CustomCommerce-based online catalog that features several easy-to-use product selection methods, such as parametric selection, solution-based selection and a hierarchical product catalog. With parametric selection, buyers quickly obtain a list of products, complete with models, descriptions and part numbers, by selecting specific component attributes, for example, a cylinder with an operating pressure range of 15-100 PSI. Solution-based selection walks customers through a specific type of industrial automation design, and based on information they specify, produces a list of products that meet their requirements. Customers can also freely browse through easy-to-understand hierarchical-based catalogs or search for products by part number.

The SMC product selection site is built around TechniCon's rules-based configurator. This key technology confirms whether the selections customers make are valid and highlights possible alternative configurations when necessary.

Another key feature of SMC's site is advanced CustomCommerce product visualization. Once a list of compatible products is obtained, buyers simply click on a component name to view either a detailed drawing or interactive 3D model of the product. The dynamic 3D model, which is parametrically generated from the buyer's specified options, allows the customer to fully rotate, tilt and size the component, creating a comprehensive view of the customized product.

SMC's product selection Web site is the first part of a complete SMC electronic commerce system designed to improve access to products. "This CustomCommerce-based solution makes it easier for customers to do business with us and enables us to respond faster to their needs," said SMC's Tony Hutchinson. "In addition, the data we collect from this online system will help us assess customer requirements and track usage trends in various industries."

CustomCommerce is TechniCon's next-generation electronic commerce solution specifically designed for highly variable products. The software provides manufacturers, resellers, procurement vendors and Internet content providers with a powerful electronic commerce system, including Legacy-to-Web product definition tools, easy-to-use product selection methods and interactive product visualization.

CustomCommerce integrates a number of key technologies, including parametric- and solution-based product selection, collaborative filtering, 3D product visualization and personalization, in order to simplify the sale of complex, highly variable products. The software includes TechniCon's proprietary Legacy-to-Web tools, which leverage manufacturers' legacy product data - including product descriptions, prices and graphics - and repurpose them for online applications, ensuring the data is Internet-compatible and e-commerce-friendly. Based on open standards, such as XML, CustomCommerce also supplies companies with a Web-ready product database that easily integrates with other applications, including popular online procurement and ERP systems.

By reducing the complexities of configuring and ordering highly variable products, CustomCommerce shortens the sales cycle and reduces costs while it expands a company's sales over the Internet.

SMC Pneumatics, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of SMC Corp., one of the world's largest and most progressive manufacturers of pneumatic and other factory automation components. Today, SMC Corp. has more than $1.5 billion in annual sales and over 4,250 employees in more than 34 worldwide locations. The company offers over 8,000 basic products, each with up to one million variations. SMC's products include directional control valves, cylinders and actuators, air preparation products, airline products, vacuum products, instrumentation and hundreds of specialty products for individual markets. The company is continually applying world class design to pneumatic component and power control technology to develop advanced products with ever-higher levels of performance. SMC Pneumatics, Inc. (www.smcusa.com) is headquartered in Indianapolis.

TechniCon Corp. is a leading provider of electronic commerce solutions for highly variable products. The company's advanced CustomCommerce software combines dynamic product selection, configuration and visualization technology to help customers narrow the field of options and simplify the purchase of complex products. By allowing buyers to select, configure, visualize and order highly variable products directly over the Internet, CustomCommerce dramatically shortens the sales cycle, thus increasing vendor profitability and customer satisfaction. TechniCon (www.technicon.com) is located in Emeryville, CA.

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TechniCon is a service mark of TechniCon Corp.