The Company's Year 2000 Compliance Policy was established in March 1998. The challenge is to accurately process calendar date data when we reach the Year 2000. We are responding to this challenge. We view the Year 2000 problem as an important business issue that can affect all parts of our business as well as our suppliers and customers.

Accordingly, we have engaged key personnel from the affected disciplines of our worldwide organization to identify and address Year 2000 issues. Our goal is to take appropriate action well before the turn of the century. We are confident that we will be well positioned to make a successful transition into the new century.

Many computer programs and embedded controller software use only two digits to represent the year within a date. This approach had been viewed as a convenient way to minimize the use of computer storage. With the change of the century from 1999 (99) to 2000 (00), the use of these two digit years could result in a variety of problems. Some of these potential issues include:

Rollover from December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000

Improper display of year on devices that are able to display dates, incorrect log sorting, improper data transfer to support applications, in-operability of automatic scheduling activities, upload of data from applications that may corrupt data after the rollover event.

Leap Year Considerations (Rollover from February 28, 2000 to February 29, 2000 to March 1, 2000)

The rules for determining whether a given year is a leap year are: If the year is evenly divisible by 4, except for years ending in 00 (i.e. 1900 or 2000), it is a leap year. Years ending in 00 are leap years only if they are divisible by 400. Therefore, 1900 was not a leap year, but the Year 2000 will be a leap year.

The first century AD consisted of the years 1 through 100. The 20th Century consists of the years 1901 through 2000 and will end December 31, 2000. The 21st Century will begin January 1, 2001.

Rev. 11/25/98