Message to our competition from Mr. Steve Forsythe:

"Our customers who produce the hardware that all of us process are facing foreign pricing and sourcing challenges that threaten our manufacturing base. Responsiveness is the key to our collective survival.

Working the issues related to responsiveness also deals with efficiency and productivity. We must extend these efforts to all areas of our organization, not just the production floor. These efforts will impact costing and allow us to be as competitive as possible.

We also must examine our corporate cultures to ensure that positive attitudes and responsive behavior internally are properly valued. Our companies are only people whose collective actions determine our market place reputations. The demands on us are changing and it is incumbent upon us to continually reinvent our position in the overall manufacturing process.

Our approach to outside regulations plays heavily into those reputations. The federal, state, and local regulatory agencies are active, to say the least, in the pursuit of issues pertinent to our industry. Costs associated with compliance seem ever increasing, but various "Lean - Green" initiatives can help mitigate these increases to some degree.

Our diligence in cost containment is necessary to help our manufacturing customers maintain their stateside competitiveness".