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10/24/05 - Aerojet Signs with Cohesia® for Global Specification Management

Requirements flow-down solution that enables 100% digitized characteristic accountability is expected to deliver return-on-investment within 12 months

Cincinnati, OH - October 24, 2005 - Cohesia, the leading provider of technology that eliminates the ambiguity in the flow-down of detailed requirements and specifications throughout the supply chain, announces that Aerojet, a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader, has joined the growing list of Aerospace manufacturers to benefit from its unique solution set.

"In our continued efforts to respond to our customer requirements for better supplier oversight and fulfill Aerojet's role as a high quality, mission critical supplier on some of the most demanding aerospace projects, we found Cohesia presented the most attractive solution," said Joe Clavell, Vice President, Supply Chain / Materiel Management for Aerojet. "We believe Cohesia may provide us with the competitive advantage we've sought, and enable us to meet changing requirements for integrated supply chain management." Aerojet will be utilizing the Cohesia solution on one or two of its current programs at its Sacramento, Calif. Operations to determine if this is a "best fit" prior to implementation across the enterprise.

"Cohesia is proud to be serving Aerojet," said Tim Schigel, CEO for Cohesia Corporation. "We look forward to helping them reduce product-to-market time while ensuring improved product quality, producibility, and profitability."

With an increase in outsourcing, today's manufacturing companies are faced with growing complexities, while at the same time living with diminishing controls. Common control challenges for the supply chain include: design and configuration management, requirements flow down, and assuring the supplier network understands engineering, manufacturing and contractual requirements. A misstep in any of these areas can introduce product requirement non-compliance leading to costly and embarrassing quality escapes or major quality failures.

The adoption of Design for Six Sigma and the implementation of industry standard process methodologies such as AS9102 for First Article Inspection in aerospace, hold the promise of reducing quality escapes from the product life-cycle. There are many factors that can lead to quality escapes including product requirements that are ambiguous, conflicting or incomplete. Detailed product requirements, which specify the engineering and manufacturing definition of a product, are driven primarily from information detailed in technical specifications. Often it boils down to supplier(s) or their sub-tier supplier(s) failing to understand design and/or manufacturing requirements.

"Manufacturing and supply process readiness requires confirming process capability to build the product as designed. Cohesia assists with First Article Inspection (FAI)," reported Michael Burkett in the June 2005 AMR Research Report, "The CIO's Guide to the PERFECT Product Launch: Translating Innovation to Business Benefit."

To address this problem, Cohesia offers manufacturing companies a comprehensive solution for quickly and easily identifying, capturing, applying, validating and communicating detailed requirements across the supply chain, from what are traditionally text-rich document sources. These include specifications, process drawings, quality plans, routing sheets, work instructions and others.