NK Chari,
Marketing Director, Measurement Systems Division, AgilentTechnologies 
Our business strategy for 2010 continues to help customers find new ways to reduce their costs through a technology refresh. These are delivered through innovative technologies, process integration and services. Technology-wise, upstream design-for-test capabilities can help provide users with test coverage analysis so as to optimize their production test strategies, early. This is coupled with much faster test solutions like our latest i3070 Series 5 in-circuit test (ICT) system. We are also enabling more limited access technology solutions like cover-extend technology, boundary scan and bead probes, so that the customers can continue to reduce their test costs through smaller fixtures. Stronger functional integration and high uptime services can also help to reducecostly process steps. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Craig R Arcuri,
CEO, Alta Manufacturing Alta is already seeing an uptick in design and quoting activity, which is the first indication of increasing business. We believe that in 2010 we will see a significant spike in business. In our industry, the absolute most important asset we have is our employees. It is very difficult, even in this business climate, to find high quality, experienced, motivated service-oriented staff. In 2010, Alta expects to hire a significant number of people and, as such, already has begun the process of interviewing, qualifying and selecting these people. While we also have made investments in equipment and software, the most critical area we are focusing on in order to be ready forincreased business is hiring the right people. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Michael Konrad,
President, Aqueous Technologies Indeed 2009 was a challenging period for our industry. Aqueous Technologies is already seeing indisputable signs of a recovering economy. Our Q4 sales were strong and our forecast for Q1 2010 is strong. Late in 2008, with a stormy economic view on the horizon, we began making changes within our company. Through strategic purchasing, leaner manufacturing, and other specific measures, Aqueous Technologies experienced growth in market share and a profitable year. We did not cut our staff during the recession so our sales, service and production professionals are already in place for an improving economy. We expectmoderate growth throughout 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Burkhardt Frick,
General Manager Asia Pacific, Assembléon Flexibility and efficiency are the keywords in electronics manufacturing from 2010 onwards. And supplying solutions that will improve our customer’s flexibility and efficiency is what Assembleon will continue to focus on. The past periods have shown us that the ability to adapt is essential in our industry. Therefore solutions to business challenges should reflect the same idea, and answer them in the smartest way possible. These smart solutions are not purely around our hardware and software products; it’s also the how to use them in the best configuration and providing the opportunity to adapt to future market dynamics. Last year for instance, Assembléon introduced a concept called True Capacity on Demand, a business model to deal effectively with seasonality patterns in PCB production. We will continue to introduce similar programs for the SMT industry that will bringvalue to investments, running costs and turnover. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Stan Renals,
CEO, Cobar Division, Balver Zinn The first half of 2009 was a challenging for many of us but we are starting to see a gradual return to ‘normality’ with customers now starting to move away from traditional materials and looking at Balver Zinn’s new solutions in alloys and chemistry. We see a definite shift over the next year from organizations wanting to have a January-February 2010 | www.emasiamag.com 13 greener effect on our planet. Cost saving will still be critical and the move away from solvent based to low VOC will be a big step in the right direction, together with new alloy compositions that will reduce energy consumption. We have recognized this change some 18 months ago and over the past 12 months have focused on research and development after getting feedback from customers around the globe as to what innovations they would like to see from the Balver Zinn Group. New products are being released and further developed, which will find their way into some major accounts on the Chinese mainland earlynext year. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Gary Stoffer,
Vice President Global Sales, Atg Luther and Maelzer The first half of 2009 dealt our industry a tough hand. No company was spared from some level of structural change, including Atg-LM. The net effect of the internal changes in Atg-LM yielded a much more effective and streamlined company, rooted in the synergy of resources from our fellow Dover Technology Group partners. We are optimistic as to the 2010 business climate and see some key areas of market growth that we will target with new product platforms. The global Atg-LM team is poised to take on all the opportunity that 2010 will bring. From a personnel standpoint, we will see additions to our Asian and European sales channels to help promote our marketleading solutions to success in 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Dragon Zhang,
Asian Sales and Service Manager,BPM Microsystems We do see the worldwide economic climate slowly recovering, but the speed of this recovery may be slower than what we expected. As for the electronics industry, we believe it will recover faster than many other industries. New technology for energy, communication, and entertainment will bring the market back together with the confidence of the people. The upstream suppliers, such as production equipment, will still face big challenges in the market and will continue to carefully evaluate their investment. We are confident about the economic situation. The upturn will be slow but steady throughout 2010. In the programming industry, we did see a dramatic recovery in Q4 2009. Looking at 2010, we strongly believe that we will have a much better result compared to the past year. Considering our strategy for 2010, we will mainly focus on the following three directions: we will continue investing in our development for the innovation to support the fast changing business; we will enhance our customer service to improve customer satisfaction; and we will restructure our marketsegments to have a solid market focus in 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
CoCo Zhang,
Product Manager, Electronics Assembly, BTU International When the financial crisis started to hit the electronics industry, we set lean operations as our priority. When the industry started to recover, we enhanced our operations management to meet the sharply increasing demand. During the slow period, we also focused on product enhancement. In 2010, our goal is to gain new customers for our Pyramax reflow ovens and continue the long term partnership that we enjoy with many of our key customers. In order to achieve it, we’ll continue to use our customer’s voice to drive our business plans andoperations. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Fanny Lee,
Asia Sales Manager, Blakell Europlacer 2009 has been another fruitful year for Europlacer in the Chinese economy. The economic downturn didn’t affect us directly because our markets are more related to high value, technical products in the industrial, medical, aerospace and instrumentation segments. In fact, we experienced many successful machine installations especially at customer sites involving aerospace and aeronautical manufacturing. There is no doubt year 2010 is going to be another exciting year for Europlacer following the launch of our XPii machine platform. This is a refreshing new approach to modular pick and place incorporating technology from our innovative iineo platform. We are very confident that we can continue to deliver the best machine solution to our customers. Response from the SMT market has been overwhelmingly good in recent years. Our increasing sales activities are giving us a clear signal that 2010 is going to be another good year for Europlacer inChina. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Parito Lee,
Global Marketing Manager, Inspection Systems Business, CyberOptics During these tough economic times, most companies have postponed the launch of new products. However, CyberOptics had just done the contrary. We continued to invest dollars into our businesses and carried on with our development efforts in full speed. With the market trending towards a recovery, we now have in the pipeline, a series of new inspection systems to be unveiled in phases over 2010. These new products will allow CyberOptics to significantly expand market share and will act as a growth driver in 2010 and beyond. A new line-up of inspection systems will be officially launched in Nepcon Shanghai in April 2010. With the successful launch of these new SPI and AOI inspection products in the first half of 2010, we hope to significantly increase our SPI and AOI market share in China in 2010. We will be unveiling both cost performance models as well as high performance variants of existing models in China in 2010. These products will allow CyberOptics to target different market segments such mobile phones, expand market share in segments such as PC and memory, and alsotap into the growing "local” China segment. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Allen Huang,
General Manger (China),DEK We see global recovery in progress and recognize that China is ahead of the curve in some areas. The path forward in China for 2010 is already clearly defined at DEK as we follow our strategic GDP (Goal Deployment Program). A key point in this strategy is a focus on further enhancing the skills and resources we deliver to customers through our excellent national support infrastructure. These include productivity tools, applications expertise, process experience, and of course, the conscious transfer of all this knowledge to customers. Our objective is to ensure customers realize the maximum benefits from their DEK equipment and to help them drive costs down and enjoy the lowest cost of ownership. We are already engaged in new research and development operations to address emerging technologies within the electronics manufacturing sector. Our solutions in 2010 will include products, tools and moreprocess expertise. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
John Hartner,
CEO, Everett Charles Technologies Despite a really challenging environment, our businesses have maintained our customer support resources and key product development initiatives. Certainly we have reduced our overall capacity in line with the new market reality but thanks to our flexibility, we maintain the ability to rapidly respond to customer opportunities. Customers like our financial stability, global presence and longterm partnership with them. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Rainer Suter,
Area Sales Manager – China, Essemtec We will keep our focus on our philosophy to be a real turnkey supplier, providing everything out of one hand. That means that we will continue to improve all our production machines for each process out of the surface mount technology. With new efficient production processes and a growing R&D department, our products will be again offer quality, flexibility, user friendliness and low cost of ownership. Essemtec will defend its leading position in high flexibility/ high mix machines for prototyping, small, mid and high volume ranges. That means that we will again introduce new technologies, new materials and new ideas and designs, like we did at the last Productronica 2009 with our new pick-and-place machine Paraquda, including our latest software ePlace. Providing custom-designed machines, we help our customers improve their production processesregarding costs, speed and effectiveness. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Graham Norman,
CEO, EVS International We have put off non-essential spending and we are looking to expand our product portfolio. We are also revamping our website to give the company greater worldwide coverage. Greater emphasis on cost reductions because of margin pressure will, in the medium tolong-term, help recycling. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Simon Leow,
General Manager, Icon Technologies We are now in a great position to ride the wave of recovery. During those difficult months in 2009, we went back to the drawing board and have successfully rolled out several innovative machine features that is aimed at enhancing productivity and performance. For 2010, we intend to continue to improve and innovate with our current i8 platform, with the goal of a key improvement every quarter. We also will expand into other emerging markets through indirect sales channels. I am happy to report that we have achieved stellar growth in the China market for 2009. In the coming year, consumer electronics will remain the key driver and we will be focusing our product development efforts for this key segment. Again, the strategy for China remains thesame – delivering maximum value. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Hirokazu Nagashima,
Managing Director and Division Manager, Electronic Assembly & Test Systems Division, Juki Although 2009 was a very challenging year, Juki began to see good signs of business recovery as China became our core market from mid-2009. In addition, we launched several new products like our high speed placement machine, IS (intelligent field production solution), and high speed modular placer FX-3. These products highlighted a significant year for the company. At the start of 2010, we will continue improve our efficiency in sales and service as well as our efforts to increase customer satisfaction. As usual, Juki is committed to providing the highest level of service and improving customer satisfaction at any time. In the future, we will develop our business with the vision of 3E Evolution on basis of our 3E (easier, more economical and expansion) philosophy. In order to speed product R&D, further improve business efficiency and strengthen the function of our headquarters worldwide, the Juki Headquarter has moved to new address in Duomo in Tokyo in December 2009. We will increase our efforts to meet all aspects of the customers’ needs byleveraging on this new and modern facility. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Abby Tsoi,
Director, Kasion Automation Since early 2009, one of the strong drivers for the market - the domestic economic policy from our Central Government in Beijing, has been successfully in promoting a very active and large demand in the domestic Chinese market for electronic products, especially in communication equipment and products such as mobile phones, computers, LCD TVs and also for electrical home appliances including washing machines as well as refrigerators from inland villages. This policy will carry over into 2010 and continue to stimulate the electronic industry both directly and indirectly. On the other hand, with recovery from the global financial crisis, domestic market demand for electronic products from Western countries including America and Europe is expected to increase by 30 percent or more in 2010. We predict Chinese business performance in 2010 may double that of 2009. However, the demand for high-end equipment will see a significant percentage of market share shift from the Western countries to China. As one of the leading electronic industry equipment suppliers in China, Kasion is ready to provide total solutions to our various customers base in China including the knowhow for upgrading local Chinese manufacturer’s production lines and capabilities with our soundservice and application support. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Freddie Chan,
Vice President, KIC We did not lay off anybody during the industry downturn. As a result we now have a full team of even more experienced and capable people at KIC ready to support our customers during the industry recovery. We have also continued our investment in product development, and we will be rolling out a number of very exciting products this year. These products are designed to help electronic manufacturers become more successful in the very competitive and difficult market that they are facing. Key attributes of these products include ease of use, higher levels of automation, and thermal process expertise built into the software. Our 2010 strategies include offering world class customer support to all market segments, introducing problem specific solutions such as non destructive BGA profiling, and expanding our green technologies to reduce thereflow ovens’ electrical usage. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
R Erik Miller,
Asia Pacific Manager,Kyzen While there are signs of recovery, we are not making any significant changes to our strategies in China versus the previous years. We will continue to provide our world class products and renowned service and support to China’s best companies. In order to better supply our products and services we will be expanding in China in 2010. We are very excited about the opportunities that continue to present themselves in China and look forward to bigger and better things for 2010. We were very fortunate in 2009. Many of our existing customers, while they felt the effects of a tough year, recovered about mid-year. While existing customers always help, we gained additional market share within China. These gains helped us in 2009 but will help us more in 2010. We expect good returns from 2009’s efforts; as such we will be increasing our staff in China in 2010. With this increase in staff, our customers will gain additional local support. The focus of 2010 will be to gain additional market share with our award winning products and continue to provide our existing customers withthe world class service and support they are accustomed to. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Tetsuro Nishimura,
President, Nihon Superior Nihon Superior has been preparing for the expected upturn in China market with the new factory that we set up in the Jiangsu Sheng Suzhou industrial estate last year. The new factory is expanding our production capacity to supply the recovering demand in the Chinese market. The demand in the Chinese market has been recovering earlier than expected as well as the sales of SN100C since the second half of 2009. The production capacity will be approximately five times larger with the capability to produce about 50 tons per month. Products to be manufactured include solder bar, solder paste, and cored solder wire. The products will be mainly supplied to Japanese Electronics OEMs in China. The goal is to at least triple the current sales within the Chinese market by 2013 by utilizing the available increase in production capacity of the new factory. In addition, the expansion is aimed at the establishment of an "autonomous” supply chain in which everything, from production to delivery to support, will be supplied within the country. This will result in speedier deliveries as materials will not need to cross national borders and also reduce the trading risks which may be caused by changes in the cost of raw materials as well as currency exchange. Nihon Superior continues to strive for improvement in customer satisfaction by establishing and expanding its global service of production andsupply as well as chemical analysis and technical support. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Jeffrey L Timms,
President,Microscan Systems With respect to the downturn, which started in earnest in the fourth quarter of 2008 for Microscan Systems, I have to say that the experience of our senior management team paid real dividends. The management of the downturn actually started before the downturn began. In April 2008, prior to the downturn, a new strategy for the company was defined. We decided that we would change the orientation of our company from being strictly product-focused to being marketfocused. This required that we define our target industry verticals and what we intended to provide into those verticals. In our case, even though we do not turn away business outside of our target verticals that fit our portfolio, we focus on providing track, trace, and control (TTC) solutions into the automotive, medical/pharmaceutical, and electronics manufacturing verticals. Once the end-to-end TTC solutions were defined, it literally drove every decision we made before, during, and after the downturn. This included the decision to acquire the Siemens Machine Vision business, the hiring of key subject matter experts for our verticals, and the decision to abstain from any significant cuts in product development while our aggressive cost cutting was underway. The result was a tripling of our product portfolio, the inking of a strategic alliance with Cogiscan to provide a platform for TTC software, and the implementation of several global contracts with tier 1 EMS providers. By year-end 2009, wewere robustly profitable and poised for fantastic growth in 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Chan Wha Pak,
CEO/President,Mirtec In 2009, we experienced a 25 percent increase in growth compared to 2008. This increase was due to the rapid economic recovery in Asia in the second half of the year and a high concentration of investment from Asian companies in high quality products such as mobile devices and LCDs. For 2010, Mirtec is developing regional product and marketing strategies to conduct high impact marketing campaigns in China, Korea, Japan, South Asia and East Asia, especially Vietnam. We will also be extending our service network to inland provinces in China and expanding our sales and service network, sited at Mirtec’s Vietnam office in South East Asia. Through the release of new products, we will equip a full line-up of AOI and SPI systems and supply them to advanced electronicsmarkets. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Jeff Pembroke,
President,Nordson EFD At Nordson EFD we are constantly communicating with manufacturing professionals who use our products through our Voice of Customer surveys, and developing new products to meet the changing needs of the marketplace, especially the trend towards smaller products with greater capabilities. Our new Ultimus V dispenser, for example, increases productivity and process control when working with two-part epoxies and other materials that change viscosity by automatically adjusting dispensing parameters to keep shot size consistent. We are also expanding our global presence to better serve our customers, and have already established new offices in Chinaand other Asian countries. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Tom Seratti,
VP Global Sales & Marketing, OK International Here at OK International, we took to heart the adage "Never waste a good crisis” and so the preparation took place throughout 2009. Our strategy included both product line and organizational initiatives that have moved the business to a new position in the marketplace and dramatically improved our value proposition. We released significant new products in 2009 including the MRS- 1000, a convection rework system for the removal and placement of BGA/CSP and SMT components. Organizationally we reshaped our distribution channels, created new positions and even added new personnel in order to deliver better global access to our wide range of OKi and Metcal brand soldering, rework and fume extraction products. Our business is also much more nimble than ever before. Operational initiatives implemented last year included a just-in-time manufacturing process that enables us to build and ship specials the day after we receive the order. And our new transaction strategy in Europe simplifies and accelerates our processes and provides benefit to our many multinational customers by reducing the number of different OKInternational vendors with whom they transact commercially. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Joshua Petras,
International Sales Manager, NordsonYESTECH While it’s true that the industry is recovering, our sales and activities through the downturn were not significantly impacted. Because of this, our business plans remain largely unaffected. We will continue to focus our efforts on strategic international growth. The large global footprint of our parent company allows us to grow or re-allocate personnel on demand which enables us to respond immediately to new manufacturing trends. We will be closely monitoring the Asian market to ensure both product and support requirements are not only meeting but exceeding expectations. At the same time, we will ensure our home markets in the USA and Europe continue to get the high quality of products and service that they have come to expect from our team. We will also be introducing new and improved versions of both 3D X-Ray and AOI products and will continue to explore new markets for our inspection technologies. In summary, we are excited and ready for the recovering market and look forward to continued success with all ofour partners in the New Year and beyond. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
David Wolff,
President, PD Circuits PD Circuits has come out of the recession stronger than when the slowdown began. Like most companies, we saw a drop in business. We adapted to the drop by making some personnel cuts, but we were very careful to focus on customer support. This has lead to improved performance,higher customer satisfaction and new customers. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Kevin Laphen,
President, Practical Components The overall outlook for our sector of the electronic production market appears to be on the up-swing in 2010! Increased consumer demand has sparked demand for new technology which is the forte of Practical. Our strategy has remained relatively constant since its beginning 13 years ago. This includes introducing leading edge David Wolff, President, PD Circuits PD Circuits has come out of the recession stronger than when the slowdown began. Like most companies, we saw a drop in business. We adapted to the drop by making some personnel cuts, but we were very careful to focus on customer support. This has lead to improved performance, higher customer satisfaction and new customers. component and process advances in a timely manner, and helping save the customer money while improving their process. We will be announcing important new component technologies in the first quarter 2010. In the last year, Practical cultivated and improved its worldwide distribution network and in-stock availability. We improved and expanded our warehouse facility in Singapore and have also expanded our relationship with KAL (Kaison Automation Limited), the exclusive distributor of our products in China, toinsure our customers’ success there. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
David Suihkonen,
President, R&D TechnicalServices We have been busy over the last year improving and increasing our global presence. We have brought on stronger representation in some areas and expanded in to new territories with our product line. We have been diligently enhancing our products to meet to the global demand of vapor phase both in reflow and rework. 2010 will bring more of the same, we plan to continue our global support network and continue to bring products to market that truly address the needs of the industry. Our strategy for 2010 will be to continue to increase our exposure as vapor phase suppliers in China as well as the rest of Asia. We are making good strides in working with some of the global players in the region and will continue to build our reputation as the leaders in vapor phase technologythroughout the territory. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Uwe Adler,
Managing Director, SEHO Systems SEHO is well prepared for the upturn in 2010. Particularly our R&D took advantage of the smooth running daily business and concentrated on the redesign of existing machines, upgrades with new exciting features and expanding our range of products with newly developed unique systems. To respond quickly and flexibly to customer requirements, our staff members were trained intensively during the year 2009. This will bring us a step ahead in reaching our goal to develop the right soldering solution for each customer. Customers, moreover, can profit from our remarkable knowhow. In the coming year we want to continue to increase our position as a leader in the high end soldering equipment market and expand our presence by further improving our customers’ production processes with continually advanced soldering solutions. Our strength lies in our innovative spirit and support. SEHO is the pioneer in nitrogen technology for soldering used in automotive applications, medicalequipment, telecommunications, TV and video technology, computer electronics and industrial electronics. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Steve Glass,
RoHS Business Development Manager, RMD Instruments In this new economy, RMD believes that a strategy of consistent brand awareness will allow us to be ready to serve our customers when a solution to a process opportunity presents itself. We recently introduced one of the most innovative process improvement tools to the electronic assembly customer. Counterfeit components are ever growing for manufacturers and RMD has developed the first non-destructive tool that can help identify potential counterfeit or sub-standard components. It is our view that this product, the LeadTracer-RoHS XRF analyzer, can help improve product quality while at the sametime save manufacturer’s time and expense. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Daniel Schneider,
Sales Director, SMT-AP 2009 had been a challenging year especially for the electronic manufacturing sector, with decrease in global demands. With the financial crisis subsiding, SMTWertheim has a strong and advantaged business model that is positioned to perform. With foresight of economic recovery in 2010, we established a regional head office in Singapore in September 2009 to grow our business in Asia Pacific. We expect that China will become the largest electronics manufacturing market in the world over the next two decades and it’s exciting for SMT to be part of that growth. SMT has developed technology for thermal processes such as reflow ovens for more than 22 years. With our continuous effort to deliver latest technology and innovation towards global needs in highest quality soldering results and maximum energy conservation, we have developed two new products in 2009, SMT VACUUM PLUS and SMT UV. We believe that the only way to sustain and grow our market share is to invest in the needs of the future by developing clean and affordable energy saving technology. With our newly established office in Singapore and the focus of growing the regional markets with new product penetration, SMT-Wertheim is positive onachieving double-digit growth in 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Can La,
Product Manager, OEMS Division,Techcon Systems We have found ways to reduce costs internally, as well as with the help of our suppliers. In addition, we implemented steps to improve productivity and manage our inventory efficiently. These changes allow us to reduce prices of some key products for our customers. As a result, we were able to gainmore market share from our competitors. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Hamed El-Abd,
President, WKK No doubt that 2009 was one of the most challenging years our industry has ever faced. We do see an upturn in business even if it’s smaller than expected. Our plans for 2010 are to take advantage of any and all opportunities that come before us. I believe that 2010 will still be a challenging year as I doubt the US economy will recover strongly. China and the world need the US economic engine to turn on if the world economy is to truly recover. Our challenges will be to deal with an overall weak growth sector. We do however plan to launch new and more economical products in 2010 to cope with the demand of cost reduction requirements from China’s manufacturers. Our most important achievement in 2009 was the launch of our own manufacturing facility to cope with the demand to support our many suppliers with local China production. To date, we are producing equipment from three of our suppliers and have also launched our own product which was developed by a team of our own engineers recruited worldwide. Our product is a fully automated solder mask exposure system that can properly expose solder mask in a fraction of the time currently being achieved by present technology. Our strategy for 2010 will be to strengthen our own manufacturing to be able to respond to the needs of our customers. Today the primary concerns our customers are looking for is cost reduction andhigher technology. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Jean-Yves Gomez,
CEO,Vi Technology When getting out of a severe crisis such as the one in 2009, the main difficulties include facing a sudden increase in customer demand with fast delivery. All well-managed companies adjust their inventory levels to follow market conditions. At Vi Technology, we have built a very efficient supply chain during the past two years allowing us to deliver AOI equipment in few weeks from the time we receive a customer’s purchase order. We also kept our work force at the level required to deliver as many AOIs as in 2007 and 2008. The first forecast we are getting from our sales network is giving us an outstanding number of AOI equipment to ship in 2010 and our first quarter backlog is unprecedented. We believe that the conjunction of the recovery in the industry linked to the demand created by worldwide events such as the soccer world cup will drive sales to a very high level. In the same spirit of 2009, we will introduce a number of new products to continue to offer solutions covering needs driven by new applications as well as a number of new features toimprove the quality of inspection. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Ralph Hoeckle,
Managing Director – Europe and Asia Pacific, Zestron 2009 certainly was a very tough year for the industry and in many areas one could see strong consolidation under way. But in every downturn there also lies a lot of opportunity. Having said this, we used 2009 to further strengthen our position as an industry leader. To give you a few examples: Instead of closing down facilities to decrease overheads, we opened up new ones. In August last year, we had the official inauguration of our new HQ and Technical Center in Kulim, Malaysia. With this second support center in the Asia Pacific region after Shanghai, China, we are now able to offer South Asian companies a wide selection of leading cleaning machines for free-of-charge cleaning trials. We have a team of experienced support engineers available to give them comprehensive on-site support and to help them find the best cleaning process possible. On a worldwide scale, we further added new engineers to our team. So instead of laying off people, we even increased our work force to provide the best possible customer support. In 2010, one of the big product highlights will be the launch of our pH-neutral, low VOC cleaning agent VIGON N 501 atNepcon Shanghai. ------------------------------------------------------------------- | 
