Costanza Announces JCIT Partnership; Ends Merger Discussions with TBM Consulting.

Business Editors

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 29, 2000

JCIT, the industry leader in Demand Flow(R) Manufacturing Education and Consulting, announced an alliance with Rockmont Capital Partners and DTAKT Systems, Inc. to provide a complete business solution for global manufacturers desiring to transform to the customer-driven Demand Flow(R) Manufacturing techniques and systems.

John Costanza, CEO and creator of the Demand Flow(R) Technology (DFT), also announced an end to the talks about a potential merger with TBM Consulting. Failure to complete the transaction by the originally agreed upon deadline ended the merger talks.

The alliance provides manufacturers with all the education, consulting and Flow Manufacturing Systems necessary to move away from production and material scheduling and the associated outdated ERP systems. Manufacturers will now have all the tools necessary to design and manage a demand-driven company that can change production volumes, and the mix of products produced each day, based upon customer demand. By building toward customer orders, manufacturers can satisfy customer demands without the expensive finished goods of products currently built to inaccurate forecasts.

Rockmont Capital Partners and the JCIT Management Team will acquire JCIT and manage the day-to-day of the business, freeing Mr. Costanza to develop application and integration partners for the deployment of the DTAKT Systems' product, eGENESIS. The eGENESIS product will be released at the end of this year after nine years of research and development. This product will be the first new generation of manufacturing systems to be based upon flow and lean manufacturing principals as opposed to the schedule-based (MRP) core of all ERP systems.

The eGENESIS product is also designed with Internet capability to allow suppliers to view Kanban material plans and flexibility forecast requirements. Costanza stated: "The DFT manufacturer can have minimal finished goods since production is changed daily in the direction of customer demand. If a manufacturer carries inventory, it will be kept at a raw material stage. Using the Flow manufacturing techniques, the raw materials can be quickly fabricated into finished products and shipped to happy customers. This is very different from the Just-In-Time inventory focus of Japanese production where raw material is minimal and repetitive lines run at fixed volumes and fill up warehouses regardless of actual customer demand."

JCIT serves the manufacturing industry as an Education and Technology Transfer Leader for the Flow Manufacturing Industry created by John Costanza.

To date, JCIT has trained over 75,000 manufacturing professionals in 51 countries. The impressive JCIT client list includes such major U.S. and European manufacturers as American Standard, John Deere, Nortel, Siemons, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Trinity Industries, Flextronics, Trane, Lam Research, Whirlpool, Emerson, AT&T, Applied Materials and Hewlett-Packard among other Fortune 500 clients.

John Costanza is the author of the best selling book, "The Quantum Leap...In Speed To Market." Mr. Costanza received a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Economics and he was awarded the Odyssey of the Mind Creativity Award. Fortune Magazine reports Costanza among the men and women who have helped U.S. manufacturing return to world pre-eminence: "Costanza is the father of Flow Manufacturing, a concept that stands traditional manufacturing on its ear, and is one of the Heroes of U.S. Manufacturing for his help in returning U.S. manufacturing to world pre-eminence."

JCIT's world headquarters is located in Englewood, Colorado and has offices in Santa Clara, California; Orlando, Florida; and its international headquarters in London, England.