Cargill Turkey Products Selects Formation Systems to Manage Product Development within Rapidly Expanding Business

Business Wire, Feb 18, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 18, 2003

Leader in Food and Agricultural Products Will Leverage Optiva to Integrate New Organization, Additional Products Into Turkey Products Division

Formation Systems, a leading provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions, today announced that Cargill Turkey Products, a leading turkey supplier to grocers, delis and foodservice operators has purchased Optiva to maximize manufacturing flexibility while maintaining the highest quality of production.

With the acquisition of Rocco, Inc., Cargill Turkey Products quickly doubled its sales. The combined companies saw the opportunity to cross-leverage information and contacts, to further increase sales, while also consolidating business processes. Cargill's Cargill Turkey Products existing systems were not flexible enough to support this level of collaboration. As a result, they turned to Formation Systems to streamline process within product development and increase collaboration.

"When we quickly doubled our sales with the acquisition of Rocco, we needed new methods of collaboration and a system that would help us quickly integrate the two companies and maximize our efficiencies," said Cory Archbald, manager of Information Systems at Cargill Turkey Products. "Optiva provides us with the technology needed to eliminate redundancies and increase workflow, ensuring a rapid integration of the two companies' product teams."

Leveraging Optiva for product lifecycle management, Cargill Turkey Products plans to reduce time to market for new products, eliminate manual processes in specification development, increase accessibility of specifications, support the sales team and enable product development to optimize costs and rationalize formulas and raw materials.

To accomplish this, Cargill Turkey Products will leverage two of Optiva's modules. Optiva Formulation will allow Cargill Turkey Products to identify product development issues and react more quickly. Formulation will serve as the system of record for new product development, approved products, obsolete product history, and raw material specifications. In addition to Formulation, Cargill Turkey Products also purchased Optiva Adapters to use in constructing integration components that will link Optiva with their existing applications.

"When companies merge, it often creates a great deal of redundancies in products and data, even while dramatically increasing revenues and sales," said Dan Keelan, president and CEO of Formation Systems. "With Optiva, companies like Cargill Turkey Products are easily managing the redundancies and streamlining business, to create greater efficiencies in product development and sales."

About Cargill Turkey Products

Cargill Incorporated, headquartered in Minnesota, is a worldwide leader in food and agricultural products and ranks among the largest meat processors in the United States.

Cargill Turkey Products, with processing facilities in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia produce a broad variety of high-quality turkey products for the supermarket meat case, supermarket deli, and the foodservice operator. Brand names include Honeysuckle White, Shady Brook, Plantation, Riverside and numerous private label products. As a recognized leader in food safety, Cargill has earned industry-wide recognition and a number of supplier awards.

About Formation Systems

Formation Systems develops Optiva, a suite of product development software for process industries. Their mission is to ensure a company's best ideas become the world's greatest products. Formation customers include large global Fortune 500 companies such as The Coca-Cola Company, GE Plastics, Akzo Nobel, Kerry Group plc, Golden State Foods, Parfums Christian Dior, Yves Rocher, RPM International and The Valspar Corporation. Formation's software offers customers high return, low risk and quick time to benefit. Founded in 1995, Formation Systems is privately held and headquartered in Southborough, Massachusetts. For more information visit the corporate web site at www.formationsystems.com.