EPIC Technologies Facilities Certified to Two Key Industry Quality Standards.

NORWALK, Ohio -- EPIC Technologies announced today that during July it had completed the certification process for ISO 13485:2003 in its Norwalk, Ohio and two Juarez, Mexico facilities and has also completed surveillance audits and recertified these facilities to the ISO/TS 16949:2002 standard. It first achieved ISO/TS 16949:2002 certification in 2003.

"These certifications are part of our effort to provide very focused support services to industries with specialized needs, including medical, industrial controls, automotive, and niche consumer products. In addition, because both these standards were developed by multinational committees with the intent to create systems recognizing the quality criteria of major markets around the world, these certifications help us better support the manufacturing needs of our multinational customer base," said John Sammut, president and CEO, EPIC Technologies.

ISO 13485:2003 is a quality management standard for medical device manufacturers. Certification supports regulatory requirements related to medical device quality system standards in the European Union and Canada.

ISO/TS 16949:2002 is a quality management system standard developed to support the automotive industry. It includes the requirements of ISO 9000 and combines requirements from AVSQ, EAQF, QS-9000 and VDA 6.1, which helps better align practices within U.S. and European automotive manufacturing communities.

"EPIC is committed to providing its customers with the most flexible and responsive manufacturing services in EMS. At the foundation of that commitment is tremendous process discipline. While ISO 13485:2003 and ISO/TS 16949 are valued by medical and automotive customers because they address industry-specific quality issues, we also recognize that each of these standards drives further development of best practices in the areas of performance measurement and standardization. ISO/TS 16949 drives additional focus in the area of customer satisfaction measurement and integration of those results into focused continuous improvement efforts. The practices we adopted in support of these certifications continue to strengthen our internal systems company wide," said Jochen Lipp, vice president operations and COO, EPIC Technologies.

EPIC Technologies, LLC, a portfolio company of the private equity firm CIVC Partners, L.P., is a full service provider of contract electronics manufacturing services. EPIC is headquartered in Rochester Hills, Michigan and operates manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Tennessee and Mexico. For more than two decades, the Company has provided world class, high quality electronics manufacturing services to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the industrial control, automotive, specialty products and medical industries. EPIC's key differentiator is its focus on lean manufacturing to achieve high throughput velocity and extreme flexibility.