BOSCH/PANASONIC MOTOR TO DEVELOP SERVO DRIVE COMPONENTS.

Bosch Rexroth AG, The Drive & Control Company, and the Panasonic Motor Co. division of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. have signed a cooperative agreement to develop electrical servo drive components. The companies are working together to develop and produce AC servo drive products, focusing on open control communications, ergonomic product design and innovative construction.

"This agreement is a significant advance for the open control and drives market, since the user will be able to select products from an ever-increasing number of suppliers," said Pekka Paasivaara, general manager of the Electric Drives and Controls division of Bosch Rexroth AG, headquartered in Lohr, Germany.

"I am delighted with this agreement, which combines Panasonic's product know-how with Rexroth's system competence in controls and drives," added Mr. Funatsu, chairman of the board of the Panasonic Motor Company, headquartered in Osaka, Japan.

A motion control specialist, Rexroth had, until 2001, marketed its open drive and control systems under the Indramat name. Today, Rexroth's flexible controls and intelligent drives serve five key markets: high-productivity machine tools, printing and paper converting machines, packaging and food processing machines, general automation, and automotive mounting, handling and body assembly. Rexroth controls are used in over 90 automotive plants, more than a thousand printing machines and several thousand packaging machines.

Panasonic is a leading global producer of electrical servo drives in the low and medium power range. The company produces more than 250,000 servo drives annually. Bosch Rexroth Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH. In the year 2001 the company had total revenues of approximately $3.42 billion (3.86 billion Euros) and a worldwide total of around 26,000 employees. Business units include Industrial Hydraulics, Electric Drives and Controls, Linear Motion and Assembly Technologies, Pneumatics, Service Automation and Mobile Hydraulics. Bosch Rexroth offers, as The Drive & Control Company, comprehensive solutions for drives and motion control in about 80 countries around the world.

For more information, call [phone] or visit http://www.boschrexroth-us.com.