April 17, 2001 — FORT COLLINS, Co — Advanced Energy Industries, Inc. and Symphony Systems have a new suite of applications designed to dramatically improve the performance of equipment used to manufacture chips — the EPM Equipment Productivity Manager.

The new product performs a multitude of tasks from assisting maintenance of tools in the cleanroom to web-enabled troubleshooting and analysis.

In March, Advanced Energy (AE) and Symphony formed a strategic partnership to deliver an advanced network-based infrastructure that connects people, equipment, and information to form a global resource management. Under this agreement, both AE and Symphony will develop, market, and support these products for semiconductor OEMs and end-users, while AE will exclusively distribute these products to the semiconductor industry as a whole.

The EPM suite provides network connectivity, web-based automated data collection, a high-performance, real- time database for time-series parametric data, and an integrated suite of data analysis applications. When the tool is connected to the network, multiple applications can share the tool and database, communicating through open object interfaces, such as ActiveX controls, and ODBC.

The EPM suite provides the platform for e-diagnostic and APC solutions, including network connectivity, data collection and data archiving from key sources including process equipment, sensors and subsystems. Also, the EPM suite has open architecture allowing users to rapidly build their own applications.