July 22, 2002 – White Plains, NY, and Boca Raton, FL – IBM and ILS Technology LLC (a Park-Ohio Holdings company), have formed a non-exclusive strategic alliance to deliver e-diagnostics solutions for the worldwide semiconductor industry.

IBM and ILS are teaming to provide e-diagnostics capabilities to improve performance of today’s semiconductor equipment and reduce field service engineering costs. The solutions address present-day quality and volume shortfalls that are common to and costly for the semiconductor industry.

The joint solutions enable global, pervasive, real-time collaboration between equipment manufacturers and chipmakers and remote manufacturing locations, according to the companies. Benefits achieved will include improved equipment availability, faster equipment installation, reduced downtime, higher throughput, and avoidance of test wafers, the companies touted.

ILS Technology’s e-Centre e-diagnostics solutions, built on IBM’s DB2 database, WebSphere infrastructure software, and eServer systems, are now being deployed in the IBM microelectronics division’s 300mm wafer fabricator.

Under the terms of the non-exclusive agreement, the two companies will jointly market and sell e-Centre and ServiceNet. ServiceNet is an ILS solution based on IBM technology that enables the secure transmission and sharing of data. The data are collected from ILS’ e-Centre and equipment manufacturers using the new e-diagnostics solution. In all customer engagements, ILS will lead with IBM’s hardware and middleware as platforms of choice. IBM will provide global marketing and integration support for joint IBM and ILS solutions.