Solving the Problem of Precision Part Placement of Converted Materials
Marian and AccuPlace Develop a Partnership

February 15, 2006

Plantation, FL; Indianapolis, IN — Accuplace has come to agreement with Marian, Inc. to market Accuplace's Precision Part Placement machines worldwide. Marian has been a leader for over 50 years in precision parts fabrication, primarily those made from flexible materials and selectively laminated adhesives. Accuplace was established in 1997 to serve the market with assembly machinery for self adhesive components.

Bill Witchger, President and CEO of Marian, Inc. stated, "It is an important step in our overall marketing strategy to OEM's to not only provide them with the best custom fabricated solution for their application during the design phase, but to extend that solution with an option for automated, precision placement of that part." Bill went on to say, "We've seen our customers’ custom fabricated parts get smaller and smaller over the years. Designing these parts is one thing, but considering how to place them sometimes becomes an even larger challenge. This is where we see our partnership with Accuplace as a natural fit in offering our customers a complete solution."

Gene Witchger, VP of Operations at Marian, Inc. explained, "All too often we see companies design a part with the functional solution for a few prototypes in mind. Producing five to ten products manually is a far cry from assembling thousands. Marian, Inc. now offer these designing companies, either with captive or contract manufacturing, some possible solutions for the precision placement of the parts. This subsequently improves their products' overall quality and reduces costs."

Accuplace, Inc. has a variety of precision placement systems ranging from semi-automatic machines, which are manually fed, to fully automatic robotic pick and place systems. One key advantage of an Accuplace system is their experience with pressure sensitive adhesive laminated parts. Accuplace machines can place non-adhesive parts as well. Another key advantage is that their base machines are standardized and typically in stock. You can customize the placement chuck and nest for your specific needs. This allows a placement solution to be a reality in a much shorter time frame vs. a fully customized, designed and manufactured machine. In addition, the Accuplace machines' versatility to merely change a chuck and nest and a reel of parts lends itself well to a flexible manufacturing environments.

In one recent example of a precision part placement problem, Marian, Inc. had an automotive industry customer who wanted to use 3M VHB to adhere plastic to plastic in an auto car interior. The application was perfect for 3M VHB, in that it's bond strength and environmental stability offered the best mechanical solution to bring these plastics together. The problem was that 3M VHB is hard to handle manually. In the application, it also had to be precisely applied. The combination of Marian, Inc.'s precision die cutting and Accuplace's precision placement made the solution to this problem attainable.

When working with today's converted materials, this type of problem has become commonplace.

Mike Terry, VP of Sales at Accuplace explains, "Precision die cutting has become quite a challenge with the variety of flexible materials and adhesives available today. We selected Marian, Inc. as a VAR (Value Added Reseller) based on their ability to not only consistently produce a tight tolerance rotary die cut part, but also to maintain consistent pitch between parts and from the liner edge to the part. These are key factors to assuring the customer yields the highest productivity using Accuplace machines."

Marian, Inc. serves its main markets with a direct company sales force. Those markets include medical, consumer electronics, transportation, appliance and electrical equipment. The company's focus is to support the design of mechanical parts from early prototypes through volume production. Marian has positioned its manufacturing to support this strategy. Each location has a variety of production competencies, including rotary and flat bed die cutting, as well as laser cutting to support lower volume needs during design.

Marian, Inc. has multiple plant locations in North America, and recently opened its second manufacturing facility in Asia. Already established in Singapore, Marian's newest location is in Suzhou, China. Phil Taylor, VP of Sales for Marian, stated, "Our position in China is key to our strategy for two reasons. First, it supports our existing customers who have migrated there and their plans for growth. Second, and equally as important, it helps these customers maintain the integrity of their designs." Almost all of Marian's products become integral parts within the customer’s product, so they are often subject to some level of agency quality and consistency securitization, like UL. Phil continued, "Our customers can be assured that if they work with Marian from the start in the US to initially develop their product, that the materials selected during the design phase will be maintained and not substituted when transferred to the design and manufacturing in China. The benefit is that our customers can design it once, and gain all the necessary agency approvals, then not have to get involved in re-qualifying potentially similar materials. This re-qualification process has proven to be quite costly."

Marian and Accuplace look forward to continuing to serve their markets on a global basis with technical support for all phases of the design cycle through volume production. "It's a natural evolution for us and our customers," said Bill Witchger. "We're excited to be able to offer this option along with our main product line. The future for small precision die cut parts just got brighter!"

Marian, Inc. is a world-wide leader in the field of converted parts manufacturing. Marian has five locations in North America and two in Asia. Accuplace, Inc. is based Plantation, FL where they design and manufacture their world-class machines.

To learn more about AccuPlace, go to www.accuplace.com.