ANSELL SEEKS TO "INSTITUTIONALIZE OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE" WITH APRISO SOFTWARE

Event-driven FlexNet Ideal for Managing Worldwide Compliance and Quality Processes

(Long Beach, CA and Red Bank, NJ – November 29, 2004) - Ansell Limited (AX: ANN), a global leader in healthcare barrier protection, and Apriso Corporation, the pioneer in real-time, event-driven enterprise execution software, announced today a major, worldwide quality and compliance initiative for Ansell, based upon Apriso FlexNet suite of applications. The initiative is designed to institutionalize ultra-high quality standards commonly known as “six sigma”, as well as cost-effective compliance, across all of Ansell’s operations and markets.

Given the worldwide scope of its operations, as well as its continuing dedication to the highest standards of quality and regulatory compliance, Ansell required a totally new software applications platform that was capable of the real-time management and control of its current and future manufacturing, supply, and distribution processes and initiatives.

“Ansell has the goal of ‘operational excellence’ across all of our operations,” commented Rainer Wolf, senior vice president and Malaysia-based head of global manufacturing for Ansell. “The real-time, event-based architecture of Apriso’s FlexNet will enable us to institutionalize operational excellence and best practices in a consistent manner, throughout Ansell.”

Wolf said that FlexNet represents a new type of enterprise software that is focused on the real-time coordination, management, and control of execution processes in the supply, production, and distribution networks. “Unlike classical, plan-driven enterprise software such as ERP [enterprise resource planning], Apriso’s software initiates and responds to real-time events – manufacturing events, quality events, inventory events, sales events, and so forth – to any level of granularity, making it uniquely capable of providing the entire software foundation for strategic business initiatives such as compliance, product genealogy, six-sigma quality, lean supply, in-line production sequencing, or real-time inventory management.”

Apriso vice president Asia Pacific and Latin America Carl Hunt added, "Ansell is one of a growing number of companies that are utilizing FlexNet for the synchronized execution of real-time manufacturing and supply chain operations across their supply network. We are extremely pleased with the breadth of Ansell's commitment to our products, and see FlexNet playing a major role in helping Ansell meet its aggressive strategic objectives in the coming years."

About Ansell Limited
Ansell Limited is a global leader in healthcare barrier protective products. With operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia, Ansell employs more than 11,000 people worldwide and holds leading positions in the natural latex and synthetic polymer glove and condom markets. Ansell operates in three main business segments: Occupational Healthcare, supplying hand protection to the industrial market; Professional Healthcare, supplying surgical and examination gloves to healthcare professionals; and Consumer Healthcare, supplying sexual health products and consumer hand protection. Information on Ansell and its products can be found at www.ansell.com.

About Apriso
Apriso is the pioneer of a significant, new class of enterprise software that for the first time enables global corporations to define, operate, and monitor supply, production and distribution processes in real time, without limits. Using an event-driven, distributed services model, Apriso’s software provides such fine-grained visibility and control of both execution processes and key performance indicators that it is an ideal platform for accomplishing the most pressing business initiatives of today: compliance, product genealogy, in-line production sequencing, real-time, RFID-based asset management, lean supply, successive refinement (kaizen), six-sigma quality levels, demand-driven supply (the “Dell” model), and the adaptive enterprise.

Apriso’s software, known as FlexNet®, integrates quickly, easily and naturally into an enterprise’s existing software infrastructure, and effectively extends the scope of systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) into the furthest reaches of the extended production and supply network, as required. But unlike these systems, which are based upon a top-down, plan-driven operations orientation, Apriso’s event-driven, process-based architecture accommodates any operational model that is based upon real-time collaboration between execution processes, real-time visibility into performance, or the requirement to define, refine, or immediately control workflows throughout the enterprise, and across borders.

Apriso was founded in 1992, and now operates in 11 countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. World headquarters are in Long Beach, California. Apriso’s rapidly-growing customer base of more than 140 customers and over 400 installations worldwide includes such high-profile, global companies as General Motors, Lear, Honeywell, Microsoft, Merck, Lockheed Martin, ITT, Baker Hughes, Halliburton, International Paper, Rubbermaid, Matsushita Avionics Systems, Saint-Gobain, Pechiney, and British American Tobacco.

The company has received a total of $20.9 million in two rounds of venture funding. Investors include Wall Street Technology Partners LP, CMEA Ventures, LogiSpring Investment Fund, SAP Ventures, and Brentwood Venture Capital.

Editors’ Note: All trademarks and registered trademarks are those of their respective companies.
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